Gastly X Machina
by Nikolai Mirovich
Summary: A short flashback story that takes place more or less during Lavender Ghost Story that tells the tale of how Miranda caught Wraith.


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Gastly X Machina

By

Nikolai Mirovich

Author's Note: This is the fourth story in my series of Pokemon based fanfics. It is sort of an in between story, taking place midway through my "Lavender Ghost Story" novella. It's basically what happens when Miranda goes to help fix Bob's computer while Misty's off visiting Professor Laurna. Oh, and this one's no ecchi in any way. Sorry guys, it's a plot episode!

Anyway, there's many people I'd like to thank, but mentioning their names could get me killed, so I won't. Also, there's an FAQ for this series, which should be at my ASSTR page ("ftp/ftp. which I've put together to answer people's questions about the series and whatnot. If any one wants to add to it, I'll be more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

Gastly X Machina

With a wary sigh and much head shaking, he hit the power button on the side of the computer once again. As the machine booted up the man rubbed his stubbly chin and pondered the problem. "It can't be a hardware problem," he muttered, glancing at the phone and wondering if he should call his sister-in-law, "I just got this thing upgraded. Unless..."

The computer interrupted the man's musings with a loud beep; although in his frustration he hardly noticed the way the normally friendly sound had something of a sarcastic tone to it. With a stern look, he watched as the login window popped up, overlapping the swirls of dark purple that made up his desktop image.

"Robert Kozlovski," he typed in the first box, before glancing guiltily over his shoulder and typing his password in the second. "There!" he commanded the machine, "Now let me in this time!"

"Sorry, invalid password!" flashed across the screen almost instantly afterwards, the small gray rectangular image that contained the words wavering slightly.

"What! This isn't possible-!" he exclaimed, frustrated by the machine's unwillingness to comply, throwing his arms into the air in defeat, "Oh, I give up!"

"Vivian!" he called out, hoping his voice would carry down the hall, "What's Laurna's number?"

"It's number nine on the speed dial, Bob," replied an amused voice that made Bob lean his head back to see the approaching upside-  
down image of his stepdaughter holding a tray with a tea pot and a rather large mug, "But you'd probably only get her answering machine. She's going to busy for a while yet."

"Hey, Miri," said Bob in a wary tone, shuffling back down into a more comfortable position as the courier set the tray down on the desk beside the monitor, "Sorry, I forgot about your friend's Challenge today."

"No biggie. Oh, and Mom said you were having trouble with the new system," his stepdaughter replied in a curious tone, her stormy gray eyes narrowing as she spotted the error message, "She thought some tea might settle your nerves."

"Bless you both, Miranda," chuckled Bob, pouring the steaming liquid into his mug as the woman went around the other side and hit the "Enter" key, "Hey, what'cha doing?"

"Testing a theory," she muttered, waiting as the error message reluctantly vanished, replaced by the login window once again, "Hold on a sec."

Bob smiled, and tried not to laugh as Miranda quickly typed, "If that's YOU in there, you're in for some serious trouble!" before hitting "Enter" once more.

"That should do it," she said, standing up straight with her arms folded, a stern look crossing her face.

"That's the look your mother gives people she's angry with," chuckled Bob, amazed when the login message suddenly vanished, and words suddenly appeared floating in the ethereal background image.

"I'm sorry..." they read before dissolving inexplicably, only to be replaced by "I just wanted to play with the new toy."

"No excuse," said Miranda aloud, causing her stepfather to push his chair back from the desk and glance back and forth between his computer and stepdaughter, "You should always ask first. And besides, I don't want you screwing around with this system. If there's ONE bit of data out of place, I'll be 'returning' you until the festival's over. You got me?"

Bob felt an icy chill trace its way down his spine as he suddenly realized that his wife's daughter wasn't a crazy person talking to an inanimate computer and getting responses. A moment later, his suspicions were confirmed.

Once the words had vanished from the screen, dark, vile smoke rose from the back of the monitor and a sad, apologetic sound issued from the speakers as it began to congeal.

Bob glanced at Miranda again, feeling beads of sweat forming along his brow even as she stood confidently watching as a ghostly shape reflected off the lenses of her glasses.

"Haunt..." pouted an apologetic voice that made Bob jump in his seat even though he knew what to expect. Nervously, he turned towards the ghost, trying not to shiver at being so close to a haunter.

"I know, but it's no excuse," chastised Miranda, her tone maternally stern, but not unforgiving, "And look, you've scared poor Bob half to death!"

The haunter turned towards Bob, whose face had become deathly pale. "It- It's alright," the man stammered, smiling weakly and inwardly wishing that his stepdaughter would keep better tabs on her pet ghost, "Really. No harm done, I'm sure."

"Haunter, haunt!" the ghost assured, nodding enthusiastically by tilting his whole body forward and back while keeping his disembodied, three fingered hands clasped together apologetically.

Miranda raised an eyebrow as her stepfather nervously reached for the keyboard, quickly logged in and began sifting through company data. "How's it look?" she asked, giving her haunter a warning glance and making him shrink back a bit.

"Looks fine," commented Bob, his confidence returning as he noticed how much faster the machine seemed to run, "Better than before, actually."

Miranda glanced up at the ghost suspiciously, only to find him with his hands behind himself, looking innocent and whistling tunelessly. "Hey, the new processor's running at 0.85 faster than before," commented Bob half rhetorically, glancing up at the ghost with a smile and trying not to laugh, "Hey, thanks pal!"

Miranda smiled in spite of herself. "Wraith?" she inquired coyly, trying to catch her haunter's eye as he looked everywhere but at his trainer, "Just what were you doing in there?"

"Haaanter..." Wraith replied innocently, spinning around and staring out the window at the seemingly perpetually overcast sky.

"You didn't mess with any of the accounts, did you?" the courier inquired a little more sternly in a warning tone.

"Haunt!" the ghost exclaimed in denial, his eyes spinning around his body to face his trainer as his hands came up defensively.

"You'd better not of," Miranda warned, taking out her wallet and digging out a plastic card.

"I- I'll just check out your courier card," stammered Bob, calling up the right window as he shook his head at Wraith. The haunter seeming cautious as he moved his body around in place so that his strange eyes would be attached to his face and not his back, "Thanks."

Bob glanced at Miranda's card, wiping dust off the magnetic strip against his pant leg before slotting it into the reader just below the D:\ drive. A moment later, Miranda's account came up in a special window and Bob handed the woman back her card.

"Wow," chuckled Bob, going through Miranda's virtual logbook, "I think we've been overworking you, Miri. These dates indicate that since you started, the only vacation time you've taken is when the Halloween Festival is on. And that's really only a few days out of a year."

"Hey, I took a couple of days off in Cerulean this August," his stepdaughter replied, leaning on the back of her stepfather's chair as she moved in close to read the scrawled text on the screen.

"Yes," corrected Bob, nodding thoughtfully as he highlighted a portion of the log, "But that's only because we didn't have anything for you except for that mail delivery you did. Goodness this thing is fast!"

Miranda smirked, glancing up at her still guilty looking haunter as Bob called up the courier's financial records. "Come here," she said, holding out her hand and giving the ghost a small smile, "I think I can forgive you."

Bob leaned back in his chair as Wraith floated past him and into his trainers arms. "I don't know how you crazy Lav' brats can do that," he commented, double-checking the records to make certain that they hadn't been altered.

"But I like ghosts," Miranda replied, unsuccessfully banishing the defensiveness from her tone as she walked a short distance and sat down on the couch that was at least four years her senior, "They're cute in their own way."

Bob found his commented choked off by his amazement as gave his stepdaughter a startled look. "C-Cute!" he stammered, trying not to sound hysterical as Miranda sat with one leg over the other contentedly running her fingers along the top of her haunter's head.

"Yes," Miranda responded wistfully, her stern expression replaced by a look of maternal love as her long fingers vanished within the strange dark substance that comprised Wraith, only to come away a moment later, trailing dark ephemerae which she watched dissolve away soon after, "Besides, if it wasn't for Wraith, I'd still be having nightmares."

Bob nodded, as always trying to be the understanding fatherly type, but never quite succeeding. "Funny that," he said, before doing a double take as he glanced at the updated financial report, "If I had a ghost in my lap, I think I'd have more nightmares- Miranda! You won't believe this!"

The courier glanced up as Wraith smiled and closed his eyes. "What is it?" she inquired, pushing her glasses back up her nose, causing them to shimmer.

"Well, the good news is, is that you're very much in the red," replied Bob, glancing over at her and trying to sound serious, "The bad news is, is that I think we really need to take a look at how we pay you guys!"

"Why?" laughed Miranda, her tone indicating she wasn't really taking the man seriously as she continued to pet Wraith affectionately.

"Well, um..." stammered Bob, biting his lip and looking from the courier to the screen, "It seems that you're up 20,000 cred."

"Tenth credits, maybe," she chuckled, shaking her head, "Seriously, Bob, if you saw the places I've been staying lately, there's no way I could possibly have saved up that much money in my travels."

The man shook his head in patient disagreement. "Courier Miranda Lilcamp," he read tapping a pencil against the screen for effect, "Current credit balance +20,000 credits."

"That has to be a mistake," commented Miranda, her tone becoming mildly suspicious as she leaned over to see the monitor, "I could understand maybe 2000, but 20K? That's just not possible."

Bob sighed warily, holding up his hands in defeat. "The system says 20,000, kiddo. But I'll do a complete system check just to be sure," he replied, reaching for his mug and sipping at the finally cool enough to drink Earl Gray tea, "Would you like some while we're waiting?"

Miranda smiled. "Thanks," she said with a nod, "But I'll have to get my tea cup, hold on."

Bob gave her a curious look as his stepdaughter poked the ghost in her lap playfully. "Wraith, dear," she said playfully, sounding like a damsel in distress, "Would you be a sweetie and fetch me my cup?"

Wraith opened one eye and muttered an affirmative response before one of his disembodied hands flew up and grabbed the eye. To Bob's abject horror, and Miranda's infinite amusement, the eye came loose with a loud, wet popping sound before being carried off by the hand. A second later, the haunter's other hand followed, and the trio of ghostly, ephemerate body parts floated out through the wall.

"Three, two..." whispered Miranda with amusement as she stared up at the faded wallpaper of the far wall, "One!"

"Ahh-! Miranda Lydia Lilcamp!" came the angry scream of her mother, making the room's three occupant's laugh, "If you want something, get it yourself!"

"Oooh," commented Bob, keeping his amused tone low, "'Power Word Middle Name'!"

"Now I'm in trouble," the woman replied, giggling as the sound of a quiet electric motor drew close.

"Yes you are!" replied her mother, gliding into the room upon her electric wheelchair, clutching a handless teacup in her free hand and being pursued by Wraith's missing pieces.

"Sorry, Mom," the two human's intoned with amused expressions on their faces as Vivian glared at them with both with her mysterious magenta coloured eyes.

"Take care of this thing," the wheelchair bound woman said in a more neutral tone, tossing the cup in her daughter's direction, "It was his."

Miranda leaped up and caught the spinning teacup in both hands, nearly dying of a heart attack in the process. "Yes, Mom, I will," she promised, sitting back down and not really noticing that Wraith seemed unperturbed by her suddenly moving through him twice.

"You'd better," she commented, glancing back at Bob with an apologetic look.

He returned her glance with a reassuring smile that made Vivian close her eyes and nod happily. "Sorry," she whispered to her husband, who shrugged like it was nothing.

"I know you loved him," he said, glancing at Miranda who had suddenly taken an interest in the portrait of sunset on the wall, "I know you both did. And that's alright."

Vivian nodded. "I just don't want you to think I love you any less," she replied, looking over at her daughter worriedly, "And don't you go thinking I don't care about your father just because he's gone. He was a good man, and I'll always love him in my own way."

"I know," whispered Miranda, her voice barely audible as her mother backed up out of the room.

"So, Miri," said Bob rather quickly as the sound of Vivian's wheelchair faded down the hall and Wraith finally got around to reconstituting himself, "it'll take a while to scan disk and defrag, so while we're waiting, why don't you tell me about Wraith? I don't recall you ever really mentioning when and where you picked him up."

Miranda chuckled as she got up once again and poured herself a cup of tea. "It's a long story," she replied with an amused smile, sitting back down and going back to idly spinning her fingers in Wraith's ephemera as though she were winding spaghetti onto a fork, "But if you really want to hear it..."

"Definitely," assured Bob, trying not to twitch as the courier lifted her fingers out of the dozing haunter's body and watched the spirit stuff slide back down to it's owner as though it were a living thing, "It might help me to understand Wraith a bit better, and make him less disquieting to me. Heck, it might make all you crazy people here in Lavender make more sense to me."

Miranda smiled, chuckling quietly as she looked down at Wraith lovingly. "You knew what you were getting in to when you married Mom," she teased, "And I think you've lived here long enough to understand us Lav' brats. There's two kinds of people who live in a place like Lavender Town, those who embrace the creepiness, and those who ignore it. Everyone else left ages ago. And besides, Mom came here when she was younger as opposed to being born here, so she's not really a Lav' brat."

Bob nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I remember the story," he replied, sipping his tea and glancing at the progress meter, "Your Father brought Vivian and her sister here from Neon Town. But your mother is loath to talk about the reasons why. Only that it has to do with your grandparents on her side. But that's not really what I wanted to talk about, now is it?"

Miranda smiled, nodding in agreement. "You wanted me to tell you about Wraith," she agreed, holding her teacup aloft and reminiscently examining the ring of dragonairs that encircled its outer surface near the rim, "Very well then, Bob. If you really wanna know, I shall tell you. It all started back three, going on four years ago now when I was on my first assignment alone after my rather short apprenticeship with Joshua had ended..."

The early morning sun glinted off the sea of windows that made up the business section of Vermillion City, making the courier squint against the glare as she rode her mountain bike down the still quiet, pre-rush hour main street. Ahead of her rose the tall, rectangular shape of the Sylph Co office tower.

Although it was less than a tenth of the size of the main Sylph Co Arcology in Saffron, which took up an entire four city blocks, the building was impressive in its own way. The strange apparatus upon its roof, for instance,  
marked it as the only building in the district with a functional transposition array. Although the technology wasn't uncommon, it was still overly expensive, and only large corporations like Sylph and a few of the better known poke prof's could really afford them. Although the later was often through city council sponsored grants.  
The girl squeezed the breaks, dropping her feet off the pedals, the soles of her shoes scraping along the ground as the bike skidded to a halt not far from the main door. Shivering against the chill morning air, the courier glanced towards the double glass doors and checked her hair in the reflection that faced her.

"I hope they're open," she commented to herself, walking her bike towards the empty bike rack and locking it securely before heading towards the entrance.

As she approached, the twin reflective doors slid open into the walls giving her a clear path into the lobby and a clear view of the yawning receptionist who doubled as a security guard.

"Excuse me, miss," the courier called, bits of dirt and gravel falling off her shoes and collecting in a path across the gleaming clean floor tiles, "I have a package for professor Iago."

The woman looked up from her coffee and smiled. "I'm afraid he's in a meeting just now, miss...?"

"Lilcamp," the courier replied with an ingratiating grin, "Miranda Lilcamp."

The woman nodded, looking down at the small stack of papers before her. "Hm,  
seems he's been expecting you, actually," she said with a bit of a curious scowl, "He said the package was important."

Miranda nodded. "Can't say what it is, though," she commented, dragging her backpack off her shoulders and opening it quickly before yanking out a large manila envelope with a large rubber stamped 'Private And Confidential'  
stenciled across it.

"I have a few ideas," the receptionist chuckled, taking a card key from a desk drawer "But hey, you can just head up now if you'd like."

"That important, eh?" the courier inquired, taking the card and holding it up the overly bright full-spectrum fluorescent lights that all but covered the white tiled ceiling.

The woman nodded in agreement. "Yes," she explained, "but I'm not one to spread rumors about my boss."

Miranda chuckled at the thought and said, "And it's against our policy to ask personal questions about our clients, so long as it's nothing illegal"  
The woman shook her head dismissively. "No," she assured as Miranda walked around her circular desk to the bank of elevators and slotted the security passcard, "It's nothing bad."

A few moments later, the courier leaned back against the wall of the elevator,  
letting out a held breath and shaking her head at the quiet, almost subliminal elevator music.

As the elevator ascended, Miranda watched the numbers on the LED display change, marking her passage up the building until it stopped inexplicably at the half way point. "What the-!" she began, feeling the metal box she stood in suddenly jerk to a halt, making Miranda horribly aware of the fact that the lift was only being supported more than ten stories off the ground by two thin metal cables.

For a moment, Miranda held her breath, listening to the strange grinding noises just above her head. The awful elevator music, however continued, not quite loud enough to block out the sounds the elevator was making as the lights went out and the reddish tinted emergency lighting kicked in.

"This is not good," she breathed, her voice unconsciously kept low as the music suddenly changed, the annoying little tune twisting into a strange cacophony of half garbled sounds.

Miranda was certain she could make out bits of music from the local radio station, snippets of phone conversations, and pieces of several Sylph Co workers office answering machines in the mix. But before long, the chaotic garble slowly altered. The dozen or so voices all uniting to deliver a single message, each voice contributing but a single syllable to the simple, sinister sentence.

The courier shivered as she heard the words, her hand reaching for the handle of the wooden sword all couriers carried at their sides. "You're next!" the strange mixture of voices announced before the emergency lighting gave way to the standard illumination and the annoying elevator music returned as though it had never left. A heartbeat later, the elevator jostled roughly, and began to rise once more.

"That was not funny," muttered Miranda, feeling her pulse race as she ascended, watching the LED tick off the passing floors with apprehension until finally reaching the twenty-fifth floor.

As the doors slid open, and the lift let out a polite little chime, the courier released her grip on her sword hilt and stepped cautiously out onto the white-carpeted floor.

"Wow," she commented, glancing around at the dozen or so display cases containing prototypes of several of the mega corp.'s inventions, and the pictures of various pokemon that lined the wood paneled walls of the regional VP's office.

"You like it?" inquired a friendly, almost eccentric sounding voice from across the almost cavernous room.

Miranda turned her gaze to the far wall, where a huge desk comprised of dark wood sat before a wall that was one enormous window over looking the city's harbor below. Behind the cluttered desk was a high-backed chair, swiveled to face the window so the courier couldn't see the speaker at all.

"Y-yes, Professor," the girl stammered, holding up the envelope and wishing there was somewhere to wipe her feet as she padded quietly across the carpet that probably cost more than she'd make in her lifetime, "I have a package that your associates in Saffron told me to deliver to you personally-"

"Ah! Excellent!" the man exclaimed happily, cutting the courier off as he swiveled his chair around and jumped to his feet excitedly, "The divorce papers at last! Where do I sign?"

"I wouldn't know," laughed Miranda, placing the sealed envelope on the desk before respectively taking a step back and giving the corporate scientist the once over.

Professor Iago's wide, toothy grin never left his round, bespectacled face as he tore open the envelope, and his dark blue eyes widening with delight as he yanked the small pile of papers free of their confines.

"Good-bye you conniving, evil, two timing, manipulative- Oh, sorry!" he muttered before glancing up at the sound of Miranda's stifled chuckle, "Can I borrow your pen?"

Miranda smiled, reaching into her coat pocket and handing somewhat diminutive man a writing implement. "No problem," she assured to his word of thanks before taking off her backpack again to dig out her clipboard, "Oh, and before I forget, I need you to sign this as well."

The smiling, happy man looked up as he signed his name for the third time on the legal document. "Well, so long as I'm signing my wife away," he chuckled, accepting the clipboard, "I might as well sign my life away too!"

Miranda laughed and pointed to the ninth space on the sheet of paper. "Just sign and print your name," she requested, finding the man's open handed attitude and amusing manner a far and pleasant cry from what she'd been expecting.

"Hey," commented Iago, glancing at the sheet of paper after signing the requested signatures, "What's this part here at the bottom about the Lilcamp Trading Company owning my soul?"

"What!" exclaimed Miranda, yanking back the clip board and blushing as the man laughed, "Oh you!"

"Sorry, miss!" he chuckled running his fingers through his short brown hair in an unconscious gesture, "Just yanking your chain. But seriously, once I'm done with this I'm going to need to send these documents back. Would you mind?"

"Not a problem," the courier assured, shaking her head and causing her glasses to slip down her nose a bit, "I'll just write you up a quick delivery contract. Won't take a minute."

"Take your time," replied Iago, waving his hand dismissively, "Just take a seat over there and relax. I'm going to need my assistant for this last part anyway."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I'm not very good at legalese, I'm afraid," he explained, sitting back down in his leather backed chair and shaking his head at the document before hitting a button on his desk, "Excuse me, but would Professor Kipp please report to my office when she gets the chance."

"Former lawyer?" inquired Miranda with a bit of a chuckle as she found the appropriate form and sat down in one of the smaller, but still comfortable cloth chairs in front of the man's desk.

"Naw, just a master of red tape," explained Professor Iago, "Among other things..."

Miranda glanced up from her clipboard and was about to inquire when a concealed door to her right clicked open and swung inwards. From within the concealed room, the sounds a dozen or so people working at computer terminals could be heard over the gentle hum of spinning hard disks and noises of video games being played on company time.

Through the door, however, stepped a woman who made Miranda want to take a step back. 'Yikes!' thought Miranda, trying not to draw attention to herself a woman who was easily over six feet in height stepped gracefully into the room and casually flipped the door shut behind her.

"What's up this time, boss?" she inquired in a bored tone, running her fingers idly through her rather androgynous looking, shoulder length brown hair before crossing her arms across her chest.

"The papers came in today, Jo," Iago explained, handing the stack of stapled documents to the imposing woman and making no effort to hide the fact that he was staring blatantly at her legs, "I just need you to go over this last part. Looks a little suspicious to me."

Professor Kipp nodded as she turned several pages over, her light blue eyes going over the words of the document with calculating precision. "Yes," she said at last, her tone becoming business-  
like, "Basically, it says here that your ex-wife will receive ninety-five percent of your shares in Sylph Co if you sign here, but by signing back on page three, and NOT on page five, you've vetoed that. Unfortunately, though, by signing twice on page three, you've made it possible for her to take control of the South Bay research laboratory."

"There are worse fates," replied Iago with a shrug, prying his eyes off the woman's anatomy for a moment as he looked thoughtfully out into nothing, "There's not much she can do down there anyway. Besides play with fish I guess... And if she causes any real problems, she becomes President Mordeaux's problem, not mine."

"So who's her lawyer for the divorce anyway?" inquired Kipp, tossing the papers back on the desk and glancing over at Miranda for the first time.

"Dupont," her boss responded dryly.

"Hm, thought so," the woman smirked dismissively, "Looks like his work. Freaking amateur. Oh, and who's your new friend, by the way?"

Iago looked a little startled before glancing over the rims of his wide rimmed glasses in the courier's direction. "Lilcamp, right?" he inquired with a smile she now recognized as a lecherous grin.

"Miranda, actually," corrected the girl a little nervously, getting to her feet and placing the completed document on the desk, "Oh, and all that's needed is your signature here, at the bottom."

"Hold on. Let me see that!" replied Kipp suspiciously, snatching away the paper before her employer could get his stubby fingered hand on it.

"It- it's just a standard contract," stammered Miranda, chastising herself for feeling unreasoningly intimidated by the older woman's presence.

Professor Kipp nodded, her eyes scanning the document suspiciously before handing it to Iago. "Looks good," she said in a lighter tone, a thin smile crossing her lips as she turned to Miranda and held out her hand, "Hi, I'm Professor Joanne Kipp. Sorry about that, but I have to look out for my employer."

"No problem," the courier assured her, trying not to be annoyed at the thought of being so mistrusted as she took the woman's hand and shook it, "But I do have something I'd like to ask, if it's okay."

"Sure!" laughed Professor Iago, carefully putting the signed documents into a new envelope, "Ask away!"

"Well," Miranda explained a touch pensively as she glanced back at the elevator, "I had a bit of a bit of a problem with your lift on the way up here."

Kipp and Iago exchanged a quick, surreptitious glance that Miranda didn't catch. "Oh, we've been having problems with the elevators all week," the woman assured as the man nodded, "It's nothing to worry about, though. We have a repair crew working on it."

"But I think that there was a problem with the intercom as well," the courier continued, giving them both a suspicious look.

"The intercom?" inquired Joanne, glancing at Iago questioningly, "Why wasn't I informed, boss?"

Professor Iago shrugged and smiled defeatedly. "That's news to me," he assured, "but this building is old. There's bound to be problems."

Just then, a polite beep issued from a hidden speaker on his desk. "Professor, there's someone here to see you," came the paid to be pleasant tone of the receptionist downstairs.

"But I said I was in a meeting, Joyce," the man replied, pushing a button on the desk as he spoke, "Can't it wait? I'd like to gloat for a while longer."

"But you don't understand, Professor Balthaza'ar Iago," answered the woman's voice, her tone suddenly changing, becoming more shrill as a strange background noise akin to the sounds of a thousand shrieking voices filled the speaker before the receptionist's voice became far more dark and sinister, "You see, sir, it's just that you're next!"

With that, the voice cut off, filling the room with an uncomfortable silence as the two scientists looked at each other nervously before turning to Miranda. The courier folded her arms across her chest and smirked. "Looks like it's time to fess up, eh?" she commented half-rhetorically.

Joanne smiled nervously for a moment, looking slightly embarrassed as she turned back to her boss, her soulful blue eyes going wide and pleading. Balthaza'ar swallowed hard in response, seemingly unable to "pass the buck" as the tall woman pouted just long enough to drive the point home.

"Well- Err, well you see, Ms. Lilcamp," the VP stammered, suddenly giving the computer on his desk a worried look, "It's our mainframe. It's been having some problems since we installed this new bit of software..."

"Problems?" Miranda inquired with a hint of amusement, "Seems more like someone's given it a strange sense of humor."

Joanne shrugged as she leaned against the desk. "You're partially right," she replied, ignoring Iago's suddenly horrified look in her direction, "It does have a sense of humor, but not because we gave it one. The... System itself developed that on its own."

"Um- What our dear Professor Kipp is trying to say," interrupted Iago, smiling widely, sweat forming on his brow as he leaned back in his enormous chair, "Is that we recently completed one of our most groundbreaking experiments to date. The successful creation of an independently thinking computer."

"You made an AI?" inquired Miranda with an amused grin, "And some overworked, underpaid techie got bored and gave it a sense of humor?"

"Err, not exactly," muttered Iago, glancing at Joanne, his eyes reflecting his desperate concern, "You see, it sort of developed this personality quirk on its own."

"Looks like you did your job a little too well," commented Miranda, looking back towards the elevator and wondering if it might not be a better idea just to take the stairs.

"Thank you," said Joanne with an appreciative smile as she turned back to her employer, "You see, boss? Some people DO appreciate all the work I do around here!"

Iago folded his arms across his chest and raised a disapproving eyebrow. "Well, it WAS your project, Professor Kipp," he said in a suddenly stern tone, keeping the amusement from his voice as he formulated a plan, "And as such, you are the one responsible for it if something goes wrong."

"Wha-!" exclaimed Joanne in a sudden panic, slamming her hands down upon his desk and staring down at him pleadingly as she leaned forward, her partially open blouse giving the older man an eyeful, "But- But Professor, I thought you said we were a team..."

Balthaza'ar Iago smiled, leaning back again as he linked his fingers over his stomach and seemed to relax. "Yes, Professor Kipp," he replied, ignoring her sultry pleading tone, "A team where I am the team leader. And as such, it's my job to delegate responsibility. And in THIS case, Professor, YOU'RE the one responsible for the current... 'Malfunction.' So please, take care of it would you? I'm a busy man, and I believe that we've taken up enough of Ms. Lilcamp's time."

"But- But-!" she stammered as Iago pointedly ignored her and shuffled the papers on his desk.

"That will be all Professor Kipp," he said simply as the woman stood up, straightened her all to short skirt and adjusted her lab coat.

"Fine then," said Joanne, somehow keeping the annoyance from her voice as she turned to the courier and smiled sadly. "Well, sorry from dragging you into all this, Miss," she said apologetically, "but I'm sure I can take care of it eventually."

Miranda shrugged. "No big deal," she said thoughtfully as Joanne lead her back to the elevator, "But it's too bad my Aunt Laurna's not in town. She knows a thing or two about computers, and she'd probably be able to help-"

"Did- Did you say 'Laurna'!" the scientist exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm.

"Err, yeah..."

"Oh my goodness!" laughed Joanne, throwing her arms into the air melodramatically as she looked at Miranda with renewed interest, "I went to University with her!"

"Really?" Miranda inquired politely as she began to wonder about the woman's sanity.

"Oh yeah," continued Joanne, leaning her shoulder against the wall and looking reminiscent, "She was my roommate for three years. She's the one who gave me the idea for the AI project you know."

"She thought of it first then?"

"On, no, no!" the woman laughed, waving her hand dismissively, "It was that gastly of hers, actually-"

"KIPP!" exclaimed Professor Iago from across the room, his voice suddenly full anger as his round face blazed red.

"Ooops!" the woman muttered, looking embarrassed, "I guess I shouldn't have said that..."

"Viper?" blinked Miranda, "How did he give you an idea for an AI?"

Joanne's tone became more nervous as she hit the elevator button several times as hard as she could. "Well, err, ya know," she stammered, cursing under her breath as the lift seemed to be taking its own sweet time, "That um, gastly just made me think that maybe all those scientists before were looking at the problem the wrong way. That maybe it wasn't software that we needed, but hardware."

"Oh dear," the courier muttered, suddenly dreading where the conversation was going.

"Well, you see," the scientist explained, "first I figured I'd try something out with my TI-85, but her mind is too structured, so-"

"TI-85?" inquired Miranda, finding her curiosity peaking.

Joanne nodded. "She's my magnemite," the scientist said with a reminiscent smile, "I picked him up when our class was doing a unit on 'spontaneous generational' pokemon. Unfortunately, as I said, she wasn't quite what we were looking for. TI-85 can access information and give commands, but she needs to be instructed to do so. It seems that magnemites lack the necessary affinity for creative thinking that we're looking for. To be honest, their minds are just too... simple really."

"So you found something a little more complex then?" inquired Miranda, amused by the elevator's stubbornness as Joanne glanced nervously over her shoulder at Iago, who was even now holding his head with one hand and eating a bottle of pain killers with the other, "Something that had both an affinity for computers and was more creative than a magnemite?"

"And was more independently thinking," added Joanne with a heavy sigh. "Yes," she admitted warily, "that's why we sent a team over to Lavender to capture a few 'test subjects'."

"You could have asked my aunt, I'm sure she'd-"

"Oh no!" interrupted Joanne, shaking her head quickly, "We had to keep this a secret! Heck, we even hired some kid to go down and buy a few of those special pokeballs Laurna makes... Which we still can't synthesize, by the way."

Miranda smirked at the thought, but kept her gloating to herself. "So you caught a few ghosts then?" she inferred, "And brought them back here so you could interface them with your mainframe?"

"Err, well, something like that," Joanne admitted quietly, nervously brushing back her hair as the elevator made a loud -  
ding!- and the doors began to slide open, "but to be honest, we lost an operative in the attempt and only managed to get one."

"So, if it's causing problems with the mainframe, why not just 'return' it-?" Miranda inquired as Joanne moved to enter the elevator but immediately stopped and grabbed the sides of the door.

"Dreck!" she shrieked, one leg dangling dangerously over the edge of the empty elevator shaft as her shoe plummeted downward and the doors started to close again.

"Professor!" the courier shouted, quickly grabbing the scientist's shoulders and yanking her back into the VP's office.

As the two tumbled to the carpeted floor in a heap, a sinister laughter echoed from deep within the void as the metal doors banged shut with a certain finality.

"Th-thanks," Joanne stammered, struggling to her feet as Professor Iago ran to her side.

"Are you alright!" he called in a sudden panic, quickly moving to help the woman as Miranda sat up and glared at the now sealed doors.

"Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine," the scientist muttered in annoyance as Miranda got to her feet with a scowl.

"You do have a contingency plan for something like this, right?" she inquired, glancing at the two as Professor Iago began sweating again.

"Well, not exa-" he began, only to interrupted by Joanne.

"Actually, yes!" she said triumphantly with a grin, "I can recontain this thing in no time. I just have to coax it out of the system and the 'return' the ghost to its ball. Then problem solved."

Miranda gave her a skeptical look. "You're sure it'll be that easy?" she inquired, glancing up as, as if on cue the lights above them flickered and died before the emergency generator kicked in.

Joanne and Balthaza'ar glanced up as well, the suddenly dim red lighting in the room causing them both to gulp loudly. "M-maybe we should evacuate the building," the woman suggested, causing her employer to shake his head in dismay.

"Unbelievable," he muttered glancing disapprovingly up at Joanne, "Look, we can't afford to alarm the other businesses in this building. This is a Sylph matter and I'm sure you can take care of it quietly. Blackouts aside."

"I'll get started on a cover story," promised Joanne nervously, "But first I'll just stop by the computer lab and take care of our little pest."

"You're sure it'll be that easy?" inquired the courier looking up at the emergency lights as they flickered and dimmed a notch.

"Not a problem," assured the scientist, brushing off her lab coat and striding across the plush white carpeting, stained red by the emergency lighting, towards the secret door she'd come through earlier with sudden confidence as Miranda hurried after her, "We have the most powerful computers on the continent at our disposal! Our technology is infallible!"

"What about our little friend?" came Miranda's query, her stormy gray eyes widening as she peered into the huge computer lab, it's dozens of workstations each with its own wage-slave busily banging away on keyboards that were slightly too small, each competing to see whom could acquire carpal-tunnel syndrome first.

"I told you, not a problem," came Joanne's reassuring tone as she slid into the chair of a large, cluttered workstation at the front of the room facing all of the others to signify its owner's importance before quickly banished her flying dollar sign screensaver with a tap of the 'any' key, "I have a plan."

"I've heard that one before," Miranda chuckled, moving away some of the junk before hopping up onto the edge of Joanne's desk as the woman's long, manicured fingers danced along the keyboard as though the scientist were born to hack code.

"Oh ye of little faith," smiled Joanne before scowling. "Oh, he's good," the woman muttered under her breath a moment later, suddenly typing one-handed as she reached into her inner lab coat pocket and produced a white and steel gray, pokeball in storage mode.

"Back-up?" Miranda inquired, tensing slightly as her fingers absently brushed across what appeared to be a modified toaster equipped with a few extra dials and some kind of needle gauge along with its mandatory exposed vacuum tubes.

The woman merely nodded, catching Miranda's eye with a wide smile as her left hand continued to run through various security protocols, somehow magically bypassing the continual barrage of encryptions the ghost sent her way. "Just an old friend," the scientist assured, smiling as she hit the activation switch on the ball, causing a wave of light to issue forth and a sudden loud alarm sounded.

"Warning!" came a seductive female voice with a hint of panic, "Containment breach in Sector 7G! All personal have three minutes to evacuate the facility."

"That's bad, right?" the courier inquired as most of the techies leapt out of their chairs and raced for the fire-exit in a panic while Miranda glanced at the oddly shaped creature that floated past her line of vision.

Joanne shook her head. "Don't worry," she replied standing up a bit to see over her monitor. "Geoff!" the woman called, sending a bored looking security guard who was reading a newspaper in the corner a scowl, "we have a slight problem here. Think you can, oh, I dunno, help out a bit?"

The tall, thin man shrugged from behind his paper, adjusting his hat as the last few Sylph Co workers scurried past him, their arms laden with computer components, RPG books, a few live chickens, a small nuclear device and an assortment of other junk they'd brought from home. "Eh, I'll do it later," came his mumbled Scottish accent as Miranda absently dug out her purple coloured Electronic Parazoological Encyclopedia & Data Input/Output Device.

"Um, shouldn't we be fleeing in terror or something?" the courier inquired, aiming the pokedex at the floating metallic looking orb with what appeared to be horseshoe magnets attached to its sides as it focused its single Cyclops eye at her curiously.

"Naw, relax," assured Joanne, her scowl not penetrating Geoff's blatant indifference to the crisis, "I can seal the breach from here. Ti', can you link up with the system, please? I need to override the containment controls but that little glob of ectoplasm keeps modulating the password. Can you keep him busy for a moment?"

"Nemite," assured the metallic pokemon as it turned it's mechanical gaze from the courier and floated closer to the monitor. Then, the flat disk that served as it's eye shined a focused beam of amber light at the side of the bulky screen, causing the computer to respond with an unhappy clicking sound.

"Odd little thing, isn't it," Miranda commented, feeling strangely calm as the red flickering lights and slowly pulsing alarm became strangely easy to ignore, giving her a moment to tap the 'Analyze' key on her 'Dex.

"She," corrected Joanne, biting her lower lip and giving half a smile as her eyes reflected the passing numerical codes she ploughed through, "TI-85's a girl."

"How can you tell?" Miranda inquired as the little screen on the left side of her pokedex showed a green wire mesh schematic for the creature that seemed to be assisting the scientist, all the while scrolling the species's vital statistics across the bottom.

"I just can," said Joanne with a shrug, the pokedex blissfully silent as the scrolling words read out "Kingdom 'Inanimae,' Phylum 'Adamus'...".

"So, um, what's that containment thing containing exacting?" the courier inquired, her 'Dex scrolling "Order 'Fulmenos', Family 'Voltolae' Genus 'Volto' Species 'Volto magneto', common name 'Magnemite'..."

Joanne shook her head as the 'U' shaped objects attached to either side of TI-85 spun slowly as the little hovering orb shuddered a little from the seeming exertion. "Can't tell ya," she replied before smacking down the 'Enter' key with sudden triumph. "Ah ha!" the woman exclaimed, leaping to her feet and causing Miranda to hop off her desk in surprise as the woman's chair clattered to the floor behind her, "Gotcha ya little blob of goo!"

"You got him out of the system?" inquired Miranda speculatively, raising an eyebrow as "Type steel/electrical, weaknesses Fire, fighting and Ground techniques; Strong against rock, ice, plant..." scrolled across the little monitor, threatening its owner with a bad case of eyestrain.

"Nope," Joanne replied, leaning back in her seat and smiling proudly at her monitor as TI-85 broke contact and made a small sound of relief similar to escaping steam shortly before power was restored and the lights came back on, "but I managed to keep him out of sector 7G. For now..."

Miranda nodded, glancing up at the ceiling tiles as the computer countdown voice halted abruptly, quickly changing its mind about the nature of the emergency. "But not out of less essential systems, I guess," she replied glumly as the computer voice slowly altered itself. "Containment field, reinitialized," the female sounding voice announced before slowing down, becoming distorted and stammering out a reply, "The eeemmmmmergeeeenccceee, is-is-is overrr-" the voice shifted radically at that point, taking on a more sinister aspect, "H-H-H-How-Howeeeever, hacker. You're next!"

"I think he means you," called out the security guard from across the room as Miranda's pokedex displayed the peculiar nutrient requirements for TI-85 and Geoff stood up to get a coffee from the machine at the back of the room.

"Whatever, Geoffrey," muttered Joanne, going back to a bout of frantic typing, "Look, if you're not going to contribute, could you at least stay out of my hair?"

The security guard shrugged as he put nearly four credits worth of change into the coffee machine and gabbed one of the paper cups the machine didn't actually supply on its own. "Oh, come on now," Geoff replied, hitting one of the buttons on the machine several times to no avail, "I'm just trying to add a little levity."

"Off hand, I'd say this ghost's sense of humor is enough levity for all of us," Miranda commented as sparks flew from Joanne's keyboard and her screensaver came of line.

"What the-!" the scientist exclaimed in aggravation, rubbing her fingers against each other to restore feeling before tapping frantically at the keys, "I- I can't clear it. The OS isn't accepting my password!"

"Try hitting it," responded Geoff, picking up a stack of paper cups from the water cooler and dropping the lot into the recycle bin. "There," the security guard grumbled under his breath, "That ought to be 3.85's worth!"

"Ti, try a direct interface," said Joanne, sparing Miranda half a glance as she reached over and flipped on the machine the courier was examining earlier as the floating orb linked itself with the monitor again, its single cyclops eye showing a flowing pattern of ones zeros and the occasion two.

"What is it?" Miranda inquired as the machine made a series of small timed beeps.

"Look here," instructed Joanne, pointing at the black screen of her monitor. Upon it the words "You're Next!" had appeared, printed in large purple block letters. The phrase bounced/moved about the screen; rebounding off the edges of its limited space in a seemingly random pattern. As it did so, the machine on Kipp's desk responded with a beep. One for every time the words hit the side of the screen and bounced off.

"It detects your screensaver bouncing?" inquired Miranda skeptically, now knowing for certain that one had to be crazy to work at Sylph Co.

"No, no, no," the woman laughed, shaking her head in dismay as her magnemite made a few unhappy noises, "It detects sarcasm. This is NOT my normal screensaver. It seems our little friend decided to lock me out and change it to this. As you said, Miss, this ghost's sense of humor is enough levity for everyone."

Miranda glanced up at Joanne with an amused look. "That doesn't explain why you have one of these, Professor," she replied as the scientist turned back to TI-85 and nodded slowly at something the pokemon said, "But I suppose it couldn't hurt to see how good it really is..."

The courier smiled mischievously, giving her arm a bit of a shake and causing a mirconized pokeball to roll out of her sleeve and into the palm of her hand. "Nezumi," she said quietly as the ball expanded to the size of a baseball, "come ye forth."

"The ghost's rotating the password almost as quickly as Ti's hacking it," muttered Joanne as the ball clicked open and a small dark-purple and white rodent materialized on the desk beside the sarcasm detecting machine, "Um, Ms. Lilcamp, what are you doing?"

Miranda smiled. "Just checking out your toy, seeing if it's just reacting to the computer or if it actually does detect sarcasm," she explained with a grin that caused Joanne to gulp nervously and leaned a little farther back in her chair, "Nezumi, I need your help."

The rattata glanced up at his trainer with a skeptical look as she pointed at the machine before turning to face it and sniffing the air between them. "Ra, rattata?" he inquired, his tone causing one of the little black needles on one of the dial to move to the half way mark as the beeping sound became a little louder.

"It detects sarcasm," the courier chuckled in amusement, affectionately scratching the little rodent between the ears, "Just say something silly. Like one of your usual comments."

Nezumi gave a short laugh as he sat upon his haunches and waved his forepaw dismissively. "Tatta," he assured, causing the machine to react again as the rattata turned to face it and got comfortable.

"What's he doing?" inquired Joanne a little nervously as Nezumi stretched out a bit and preened his whiskers before clearing his throat and seeming to focus his thoughts like some kind of professional vocal performer.

"To Nezumi," explained Miranda with a sense of amused pride, "Sarcasm is scalpel, not a bludgeon. To some, it's the lowest form of humor, but to MY rattata, it's an art form!"

Nezumi glanced up at her with a sudden annoyed look, and waved the courier close.

"Yes, dear?" the girl inquired with amusement, leaning in and pressing her ear close to the pokemon's snout as he whispered a series of quick, quite syllables, "Hm? Oh, yes, of course!"

Miranda giggled as she stood straighter and gave Joanne an amused look. "The maestro would appreciate complete silence during the performance," she explained as Nezumi nodded and returned to his work, letting out a few quiet squeaks to ready his voice.

"I so don't need this," Joanne muttered, ignoring the rattata's sudden glare as she watched TI-85's now shaking frame as she hovered closer to the monitor, the blue stream of data becoming darker with frustration.

At last, though, as the room quieted, save for the whirring of the cooling fans and the beeps from the sarcasm-detecting machine, Nezumi rose up upon his hind legs, his gleaming red eyes filled with fiery determination. For a long moment the rodent stared across the desk at the device. It's gleaming dials and shimmering/blinking lights taunting him silently as Nezumi's whiskers twitched with the passing of a breeze from the air ducts. For a time, the tension mounted, the rattata's forepaws clenching and unclenching as he focused his mind on his mechanical opponent, readying himself for the greatest challenge of his life, steeling himself against possible failure and then banishing such thoughts from his mind.

But at last, the little creature took a deep breath, holding it in his lungs as he rose his little forepaws into the air as though about to give a proclamation to the masses. Then, with a small, satisfied smile, the pokemon whispered but one single, quiet word that seemed completely devoid of emotion, let alone sarcasm.

"Rattata."

If the universe were truly birthed with but a single word, Nezumi's was at least a small fragment of the one that could end it. With a terrible flash of light, a loud, ear-splitting screeching whine and a loud sound of out rushing air, the machine that detected sarcasm exploded into a million tiny fragments that flew in all directions from the small fireball that burst to life upon Joanne's desk, showering the room with smoking bits of wires and vacuum-tubes.

"You got him!" came a happy exclamation through the black noxious smoke that quickly filled the air.

"Wha-? What are you talking about?" coughed Joanne flinging her hands about to dispel the fog.

"The ghost!" laughed Balthaza'ar Iago bursting into the room at the sound of the explosion, "With that kind of ruckus you must have caught it!"

"Nope, sorry," replied Miranda, taking off her glasses and wiping off the dirty lenses on her shirt as the blurry image of Nezumi smiled proudly up at her, his eyes filled with amusement.

"Then what was-?"

"Sorry, boss," Joanne muttered, shaking her head at the smoking wreckage that was once her invention, "It was just Ms. Lilcamp's rattata. He overloaded the sarcasm detector."

"What'd he say?" chuckled Iago looming closer as the smoke cleared and the sound of a distant phone ringing came to life from the other room.

"Rattata," explained Miranda with a shrug as a second phone began to ring on one of the unoccupied desks.

"No, I mean what did he say?" inquired Iago as both he and Joanne looked at the courier discerningly.

"I told you," Miranda replied as the vid-phone on the wall next to Geoff began to ring as well, but the security guard seemed content to ignore it as he continued to read his paper, seemingly oblivious, "He said 'rattata'."

"No," insisted Joanne, flinging her hands down on her keyboard in frustration, "He means, what did your verminous familiar say in our terms. What's the translation?"

Miranda smiled down at Nezumi as she slid her glasses back on and the little rodent chuckled merrily. "As I said," the courier replied, scooping the pokemon up into her hand and holding him close, "Nezumi said 'rattata'. That's it. That's all."

"He said his species name?" inquired Joanne, her pale blue eyes going wide as the scientist twitched a little at the sight of both the courier and her rattata nodding in unison agreement.

"Rattata," they both agreed to Iago's amusement.

"Oh I give up!" muttered Joanne, shaking her head and turned back to the hopeless case she called her computer as several more phones came to life, ringing incessantly and ever more loudly.

"Um, you, whatever your name is," ordered Iago as he turned to leave, waving his hand dismissively in the security guard's direction, "Would you mind getting that?"

Geoff threw down his newspaper in frustration as he hauled himself up off the chair, his bones creaking just a little. "Oh, alright," he muttered walking over to one of the workstations and snatching up the phone, "Hello?"

Miranda turned as the tall, thin man went silent, his expression paling as he eyes widened. "What is it?" she asked, breaking whatever trance Geoff had gone into.

"It, it's for you," he replied in the strange silence that overtook the room as soon as he'd answered the phone.

The courier gave him a suspicious look as she put Nezumi upon her shoulder and walked across the gleaming white tiled floor to where the security guard stood with a shocked expression upon his face. When Miranda held out her hand to him, Geoff dropped the phone into her palm and fell back into a swivel chair, staring blankly out at nothing.

"Yes?" the courier inquired, turning back the way she had come to where Joanne was hitting keys at random, trying to unsuccessfully disengage the screensaver to no avail.

The phone was silent for half a heartbeat; all except for the omnipresent mild crackling static on the line that showed it was connected. But as the courier glared and was about to hang up, a voice came on the line. A voice whose tone spoke of malevolent humor as its giggling, cackling words issued loudly from the receiver. "You're next!"

Miranda's stormy gray eyes widened for a moment as they cast about the room, catching sight of all the flat-screen monitors that faced her. Each and every single one with the same, block-letter screensaver. Each with the same phrase bouncing, rebounding and slowly shifting about. "You're next!"

"Okay, this is getting a little too weird," the courier muttered, glancing at Geoff who was finally shaking his head to clear his mind. "How long's it gonna take to purge your system?" she asked Joanne, walking back towards the relative sanity of the scientist's desk.

"I'm not sure-" the woman began, her sentence cut short by the sudden high-pitched whine that issued from TI-85 as the metallic pokemon broke the connection and flew backwards across the room, spinning and shooting sparks before crashing into the far wall.

"Ti!" Joanne exclaimed, leaping out of her chair as her monitor cracked, shattered, and all but exploded behind her.

"What'd it do!" exclaimed Geoff as Miranda ran to meet Joanne as the magnemite rattled around on the floor, vibrating violently and making a long series of wavering exclamations of pain.

"The ghost must have caused a power surge," muttered Joanne, bending down to pick TI-85 up and held the strange creature close to her chest, "She must have pulled away at the last second..."

"She'll live, right?" Miranda inquired, standing by Joanne's side and placing a reassuring hand upon the woman's shoulder.

The scientist nodded, returning TI-85 to her pokeball before standing up and shaking her head slowly. "Look," said Joanne carefully, "if you want, I'll show you the way out. This isn't your fight-"

"No," interrupted Miranda, shaking her head slowly and causing Joanne to take pause, "I'm in. Your people nabbed this ghost from my hometown, so it's both our problems. Besides, you guys don't seem to know all the tricks necessary for handling ghosts."

Joanne smiled, micronizing the pokeball back into storage mode and waving Geoff over. "Okay, then," she explained in a more confident tone, "With the terminals on this level down, we're going to have to access the mainframe directly. Once there, I'll try to flush the ghost out again. But I'll need one of you ready to nab it."

Geoff gave a short laugh and quickly looked away, seemingly taking an interest in the suddenly flickering florescent lights along the tile ceiling as Professor Kipp pulled out a black and gray pokeball.

"I'll do it," Miranda replied with a shrug, accepting the ball with a displeased glance at the security guard, "but it'll take me a few minutes to bypass the imprint codes-"

"No, no," assured Joanne, waving her hand dismissively as she walked back towards Iago's office, "We did that already incase there was an emergency. That way anyone can 'return' it. Now just hold on, I have to inform the boss about our plans."

"It's dangerous to mess with the imprint codes on these things, though," Miranda muttered, shaking her head again and pushing her glasses back up her nose, "It means any moron can just go off and walk away with your poke'."

"Yeah, but controlling it's a different story," added Geoff, rolling his eyes in dismay, "Ya'd think with all the tens of thousands of cred' this company puts into all their projects, they'd be able to plan ahead a little. Especially when dealing with a freakin' ghost! Aw well, good luck catching it, kid."

"It's a 'he'," Miranda replied smugly, ignoring the 'kid' remark as Nezumi chuckled and resisted the urge to make fun of her.

"Huh? How can you tell?" inquired Geoff skeptically.

"Oh, a ghost looked after me a lot when I was a child. My aunt and uncle were always a tad 'busy'," Miranda chuckled with a smile as the door to Iago's office swished open once more.

"Okay, all done, let's get going," said an optimistic sounding voice from across the room briskly, "We've got a lot to do, so we'd best get started." But as the courier glanced up, expecting to see Professor Joanne Kipp, she was surprised to find someone similar, but different standing in the doorway.

"I- Err, um-!" Miranda stammered as a tall man in a lab coat over the suit he wore entered the room and tied his shoulder-length light brown hair back into a short ponytail.

"What?" inquired Geoff, giving the courier a confused look, "There a problem?"

"Well, kinda," the girl admitted as Nezumi leaned forward an sniffed the air between his trainer and the strange, bespectacled scientist, "I was kinda expecting Professor Kipp to be coming with us-"

"Kipp?" the man inquired with a start, giving Miranda a discerning look over the top of his glasses, "But... I'm Professor Kipp. You can just call me Rob, though. Anyway, shall we be off?"

"Now hold on a sec," the young courier interrupted in mild aggravation, holding up her hands to stem any argument, "Firstly, where's the Professor Kipp we were talking to a moment ago? And secondly-"

"Tatta," interrupted Nezumi with a chuckle.

"What!" the courier demanded, turning her head to look down at the rodent upon her shoulder as Rob tried to keep from laughing and Geoff just rolled his eyes in dismay again, "You can't be serious!"

Nezumi simply grinned toothily and nodded slowly in satisfaction.

"You mean-?"

"Rattata."

Miranda turned to the scientist and walked towards him skeptically. "You're sure?" she inquired, lifting her glasses and looking up into Rob's pale blue eyes.

Nezumi sighed heavily as Professor Kipp grinned broadly and held up the clipboard he was carrying. "Okay," he said in a more business-like tone, "The mainframe's locked away in the basement, but with everything else that's been going on we're probably gonna have a few problems getting down there."

"You're 'her', aren't you?" Miranda inquired, tilting her head to one side curiously.

"Oh, and Geoff, I will need you to come along as well. We don't currently know how many levels of the building the software's infected, and some of the non-Sylph offices on the lower levels may not be as accepting of my explanations."

"But, why-?"

"The tazers?" inquired the security guard, accessing a hidden panel in the wall without waiting for a response.

"Um, hello!" exclaimed Miranda exasperatedly.

"Oh, sorry, you had something to add?" inquired Rob, catching the long metal rod-like device that was tossed to him by Geoff.

Miranda sighed heavily, shaking her head as she waved away the offered tazer. "Never mind," she replied defeatedly, "Maybe it's better that I don't ask."

Rob merely smiled as he activated his tazer, causing the tri-prong end to light up with a bright blue triangle of focused elections that hummed pleasantly. "Very well then, shall we be off...?"

"So, Nezumi was able to tell that Professor Kipp was a cross-  
dresser, then?" inquired Bob, leaning back in his chair as the computer behind him made an unpleasant grinding noise that he chose to ignore, "By his/her scent, I take it?"

Miranda smiled in reply, soliciting an eerie chuckle from the haunter in her lap. "Oh, I guess that's technically true," the courier chuckled, her stormy gray eyes filled with distant humor.

"Technically?" her stepfather inquired.

Miranda blushed lightly, smiling like the mother of an amusing but mischievous child. "Well, Nezumi didn't actually call Professor Kipp a 'cross-dresser'."

"Oh?"

The courier shook her head, glancing out the door and wondering how much longer her beloved's Gym Challenge was going to take. "No, what he actually called her was a 'bean-picker'."

Her stepfather blinked loudly, suddenly feeling dreadfully inadequate a man for not being able to decipher a simple rattata's pun.

"Oh, it was something he picked up that first time we were in Celadon," said Miranda quietly, speaking the words as though they might cause her to burst into flames of embarrassment, and speaking the name of the city's Gym Leader with equal caution, "It was because of something one of Erika's assistants said when they insisted on doing my hair and all that."

"I heard the one girl had to wear her arm in a sling for two weeks," agreed Bob with a nod, glancing at the perpetual wavy tangles his stepdaughter's hair grew into.

Miranda nodded. "Yeah, but it was more to do with that outfit they made me wear," she explained cautiously, desperate to avoid the subject and return to her story, "One of them, her English wasn't very good, said that I looked like a 'first-time bean picker' because I looked so uncomfortable in that silly kimono they made me wear."

"I'm sure it looked very nice."

Miranda shrugged. "Anyway, in Japanese 'bean-picker' is a very similar word in to 'cross-dresser' in some fashion," she explained with a smile, "I think it's the pronunciation or maybe the kanji's similar or something. But still, I'm proud of him for remembering! Anywhen, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, when Kipp lead us down to the next couple of levels the power went out again, and..."

The red emergency lighting system cast an unpleasant crimson glow upon the gray plas-crete walls of the emergency stairwell as the metal steps clanged dully under their collective feet, taking the group down only five levels before encountering a problem.

"It's sealed our section off," explained Rob as the stairwell down to the next level was blocked by a set of thick tri-tanium doors that slid out of the walls to seal off the top five Sylph Co. controlled floors of the building incase of a problem, "We're going to have to find another way down."

"Can't you bypass them?" inquired Miranda, staring down at the imposing metal 'floor' that began after the last step, and had the words "Gate 3" written in large white letters across it.

Rob shook his head in dismay as the words slowly began to seemingly 'melt' as they watched. "No," he said slowly as the painted words slowly bled into one massive puddle of white goo, "Not from here. I'll need to open them manually from elsewhere."

'Good thing then that she's a 'man' right now,' chuckled Nezumi in pokespeak, only to be ignored completely as the puddle of white goo oozed once more, spreading out across the joined metal plates to form the words, "You're Next!"

Miranda glanced at the rattata on her shoulder and smirked, missing how pale Geoff's face became as the words morphed. "Where about's is the override?" she inquired of Rob who was already heading through the closest door and into the first level of the purely Sylph Co owned office space.

"It's not far," he replied, glancing about before motioning for the others to follow, "We'll need to tear up a few floor tiles to get at it, though."

"Were you expecting an attack or something?" the courier inquired, causing Geoff to blink and turn away from the words.

"Naw. Well, not from the outside anyway," the security guard explained as they followed Rob into a room that took up the entire floor, but was dominated by a perfectly square wall of intricately connected cubicles.

Miranda merely nodded, noting the heavy tri-tanium shutters that had rolled down to block all light from the windows that encircled the room. "Seems pretty quiet," she commented in a low tone as Rob activated his tazer and crept cautiously forward, "Think everyone got out okay?"

Professor Kipp gave a small shrug as they walked along the outer edge of the huge beige square formed by the cubicle walls, the room seeming deafly silent save for their footsteps upon the polished tiles of the floor. "Can't say for sure," he replied, raising his hand to stop the others as the trio came to the opening across from the elevators, "But I figure the people on this level got out okay at the very least."

Rob glanced back at Geoff and raised his tazer, causing the security guard to roll his eyes and shuffle past Miranda. "On three," the scientist whispered, causing Miranda to smile and shake her head in dismay, "One, two-"

"Hey, wait a sec," interrupted Geoff much too loudly, "Do we go in on three, or just after?"

"Oh get over it," the courier muttered, stepping past both men and walking into the short hallway between the seven-foot high walls, "A tazer's not gonna hurt a ghost anyway."

"It's not?" pouted Rob.

"It'll tickle," Miranda replied with a shrug, glancing into two open cubicles before moving on and taking a left at the cubicle crossroads she came to, "A tazer's designed to affect the nervous system of a living thing, right? It's meant to stun them by messing with their natural electrical systems."

"Yeah, so?" inquired Geoff, holstering his tazer and following the girl into what soon became a strange hedge-maze variant.

"So, a ghost lacks a central nervous system," continued the courier as Rob walked behind Geoff, desperately resisting the urge to tazer the security guard just for fun, "You'll do a little damage but nothing that it'll really notice. I'm afraid you'd need to switch them to a more lethal setting to make the tazers effective."

"I can do that!" said Rob with a grin as Miranda stopped, contemplating the four-way intersection she'd come to, "Oh, take a right here, miss."

The courier nodded, her hand suddenly clutching the hilt of her wooden bokken as a muffled sound several cubicle entrances in the wrong direction caught her attention. "Hold on," Miranda whispered, slipping her sword free and creeping along towards the sound.

"That won't help you much either then," muttered Geoff as Rob paused and glanced in the direction he'd indicated.

"Um, it's-"

"Shh!" came Miranda's response as she suddenly pressed her back against the thin beige wall and listened carefully, the blade of her wooden weapon held straight up in both hands, "Listen."

The two remained quiet for a moment, listening to the faint whimpering coming from close by. "Hop up and take a look," the courier whispered to Nezumi who nodded and quickly clamored up the rough texture of the wall.

Once at the top, the rattata glanced around inside the small office space, inhaling the scent of the human that wasted his life away working in the cramped, doorless prison, his whiskers twitching in response to the perpetual breeze from the air-ducts, but failing to spot any occupants.

'Sorry, Boss Lady,' Nezumi whispered in pokespeak, shaking his head in dismay at the half-eaten, but by now stale donut on the desk, 'There ain't nobody home.'

"We must have the wrong one," the courier explained, reaching up and taking the rattata in her hand before leading the way down the aisle, "we must be close to it, though."

"But, um, the override-" stammered Rob, glancing back down the way he'd directed, only to have Miranda and Geoff make a right turn and disappear. "Hey!" he exclaimed as the air became still and devoid of sound once more, "Wait for me!"

As Professor Kipp rounded the corner, he caught a glimpse of Geoff taking a left down yet another passageway. "Hey!" the scientist hissed in a harsh whisper, chasing after the fleeing security guard, "Would ya wait up already!"

But as Rob rounded the second turn, he found the long hallway devoid of life, empty except for the several dozen openings onto cubicles. "Guys?" he inquired a little nervously, creeping forward cautiously as he unscrewed his tazer at the center joint, "Where are you? Would ya come out already, this isn't funny!"

But as he slid the casing back on the metal rod, revealing a mess of wires and odd circuitry, Professor Kipp happened to glance back the way he had come. "What the-!" the scientist exclaimed, nearly dropping his tazer as the scientist spotted the wall that now blocked the way he had come.

"Oh, this is NOT funny," he grumbled, pulling out a small Phillips screwdriver and making a few fine adjustments to his weapon before sliding the casing back in place and giving it a quick test run.

The tazer flared as Rob hit the switch, sending an arc of electricity a meter or so long before grounding out into the floor and searing the ugly gray carpeting down to the linoleum. "Alright!" he called out loudly, holding up the weapon and glancing around, "Who wants some!"

With that, a horrible grinding noise issued from one of the cubicles, causing a look of horror to spread across Rob's face. "No..." he whispered, recognizing the sound almost instantly and running into the closed office before staring in horror at the computer monitor.

"No... No, it can't be..." the stricken scientist repeated, rushing off into the next, and the next, only to find the same result. The same words printed neatly at the bottom of every screen he checked. Every computer the scientist came to had dropped down into DOS, and the words "C:\Format C:\" were all followed by "C:\Y" and accompanied by the horrific grinding of hard-drives self-destructing, sacrificing all their data to the eternal void.

"No!" the scientist shrieked, running to the console and desperately banging the keys ineffectually, "That was my thesis on the kingdom Inanimae! And now it's gone!"

Just then, another computer's hard drive began to grind, causing a look of horror to cross Rob's face as he ran across the way and into the next cubicle in time to see the same words at the bottom of a black screen.

"Noooo!" he exclaimed, grabbing hold of his hair with both hands as several other computers began to format C:\ in unison, "Not my Swiss bank account!"

Rob ran out into the hallway again, barely taking the time to poke his head into each cubicle as his personal horror mounted. "Ack! All my saved games!" he exclaimed, rushing about in a blind panic, "No! Not the last ten years of e-mail correspondences that I've been saving for no apparently good reason! And... No! It can't be! Not my entire hentai collection! Noooo!"

Bob raised an eyebrow.

"What?" his stepdaughter laughed, causing Wraith to smirk and suppress a chuckle.

"Go on," the man sighed, leaning back in his swivel chair and smiling paternally.

"Anyway," continued Miranda, "As I was saying..."

Geoff turned as Rob's scream of denial filled the expansive, cubicle-infested room, bouncing off the many flimsy walls of five hundred some odd Sylph Co worker's willing encumberie.

"Rob!" the security guard inquired, holding his tazer before him and rushing off suddenly in the direction they had come, "Rob, guy! Where are ya!"

The scientist's scream came again, and this time Geoff turned around to make sure the courier was following him. "Oh, well now that's just great," the security guard muttered dryly, not the least bit surprised to find his passage blocked by a beige cubicle wall.

"They really don't pay me enough for this," he muttered bitterly, turning back around and jogging off towards the sound, taking a right at the first intersection before suddenly finding himself in one of the large cubicles the middle management used.

"Rob?" he inquired, skeptically, walking across the thinly carpeted floor as he scanned the room, making his way towards the peculiar wet slapping sound that filled the air, "If that's you man, you better tell me now, 'cause I'm tazering the first person I see!"

But the only response was the strange wet slapping sound, only made worse by the dim red radiance of the emergency lighting system, and the sudden gasping, gurgling sound that Geoff now realized was coming from the chair in front of the desk.

"Oh, man," the security guard muttered to himself as he grabbed the back of the chair and pulled it away from the desk, "I'm sooo gonna regret this..."

And as he turned the chair back around and looked at what was lying upon it, flopping about in an obscene parody of helplessness, Geoff did regret it. "No..." he gasped, taking a step back from the large blind albino cave fish that lay across the chair, "Oh man why...? Why does it always have to be fish!"

With that, the Anoptichthys jordani tilted its eyeless head up towards the man, its wide, razor sharp tooth filled mouth opening wide as it suddenly spoke. "Explain THIS security guard class four Geoff!" the fish demanded, its tail flipping impatiently.

"It- It's a fish-!" stammered Geoff, dropping his tazer and taking a few frightened steps backward.

"I know it's a fish!" the sightless, albino cave dweller reiterated in a deeply annoyed tone, "I said explain it!"

"What?" inquired Miranda as Bob coughed into his hand.

"Oh. Nothing..."

Miranda glanced over her shoulder at the sound of the two screaming Sylph Co. employees, and gulped loudly as she realized that she'd somehow managed to leave them both behind.

'Oh, man...' muttered Nezumi, shaking his head at the cacophony of terror.

"Don't tell me," the courier replied, shivering as she carefully leaned to one side and glanced into the nearest cubicle, "We're all gonna die, right?"

'Well, they might...' the pokemon replied leaning with Miranda, his nose twitching as he caught the scent of another human. 'Hey, looks like we got a live one here,' the rattata squeaked quietly as Miranda nodded slowly.

"It's probably one of the people from the higher levels who didn't quite make it out," she whispered quietly, not wanting to alarm the huddled figure in a lab coat they spotted cowering under the desk.

Nezumi nodded in agreement, clinging more tightly to the shoulder of Miranda's courier jacket as the girl stepped carefully into the doorway and walked slowly forward across the dull gray expanse of thin carpet.

"Excuse me?" she called in a sweetly maternal tone, "Are you alright?"

The huddled figure made a pained noise as it shuffled itself farther into the shadows, kicking the wall of the cubicle with a dull thud as it moved. For a second, the courier caught a glimpse of a haggard looking face before an emaciated hand reached out and pulled the chair in closer to protect itself from the outside world.

"It's alright," assured Miranda with a small smile, crouching down to place her wooden sword upon the carpet before taking a few steps forward, "I'm here to take care of the ghost. That's what you're hiding from right? The gastly you guys brought in?"

The thing under the desk gave a surprised exclamation, and soon Miranda could see a pair of wide eyes staring out at her from the darkness. "M-Miri?" came the pained sounding tone, "I-Is it really y-you?"

The courier blinked, glancing at Nezumi whose eyes narrowed as he sniffed the distance between them. 'Fang Face nailed him with nightshade,' the rattata muttered, 'And he ain't in good shape.'

Miranda nodded, kneeling a short distance away and leaning forward to peer into the darkness. "How do you know that name?" she inquired suspiciously, her heart thudding harder in her chest as Miranda thought she recognized the man's voice.

"Miri..." came the pained reply, followed by a dry, hacking cough as the chair was forced out of the way with a pained grunt, "Please, I- I've been hurt..."

The courier shook her head, refusing to believe what her mind desperately tried to tell her. "You're an illusion, aren't you?" the girl accused through gritted teeth as she bowed her head and squeezed her eyes tightly closed, "You're nothing more than the gastly trying to mess with my mind."

"No..." the man replied as a shaking hand touched her shoulder lightly, its grip as weak as a newborn's, "Miri, it- it's me. It really is."

Nezumi glanced at her with befuddlement as Miranda opened her eyes, desperately wanting to accept the illusion for real as the courier looked into the cloudy gray depths of the man's eyes and saw a wounded vision of her Father staring almost happily back at her.

"I- I hate you," she told the man in a shaky tone as tears welled up in her eyes.

"Miri," the illusion of her father whispered paternally, his warm smile marred only by the emaciated look of his face as his shaking hand reached up and touched the courier's cheek with cool, dry fingers, "how can you say that to your own father?"

Miranda smiled weakly, her body shaking as she shook her head slowly. "You- You're just an image pulled from my mind," she whispered, sniffling and pushing up her glasses to wipe away a tear, "you're just an illusion sent here to distract me."

"Shh..." her father whispered, wincing as he shuffled forward on his knees and put his arms around Miranda, "It's alright now, dear. You can stay here with me now. It'll be just like it used to be."

The courier felt her heart ache painfully as she simply threw her arms around him and found herself crying against his shoulder. "You're not real... You're not real..." she sobbed, shaking all over and knowing that she should simply leave, yet not finding the strength to do so.

"I'm as real as you want me to be," Nicholas replied, his voice sounding a little more pained before a hacking cough overcame him for a moment, causing Miranda to hold him closer until the fit had passed. "Th-thank you," he managed as his daughter pulled away and looked into his eyes.

"Is, is there anything I can do?" Miranda asked, her tone sounding almost helpless as she became lost in the illusion, unable to find the strength to disbelieve.

Her father smiled, the crimson glow of the emergency lights above their heads dimming as the air grew cold. "There is one thing..." he chuckled, sprouting long sharp fangs as somewhere in the distance Miranda could hear the sound of a panicked chittering in her ear. As though some kind of rodent were screaming something at her.

"D-daddy?" the girl stammered, pulling away and stumbling backwards as the man's eyes blazed suddenly red and long black claws sprouted from his fingertips, tearing painfully from beneath the skin, "Wha- What are you-!"

"I'll swallow your soul!" her father laughed as a sudden blur of purple streaked out of nowhere, leaping at the illusion's throat.

'Swallow this!' Nezumi exclaimed as his oddly gleaming fangs sank into the man's throat and black dust erupted from the wound like a partially plugged geyser as Miranda's hand fell upon the hilt of something hard and reassuring.

"Dreck!" the courier exclaimed, suddenly remembering where she was and thankful for her habit of placing the business end of her wooden blade forward whenever she put it down as she grabbed it up and jabbed the bokken forward with all her might.

The illusion howled in seeming pain as the curved wooden blade passed through his chest as though it were made of straw, spewing more black dust as he clutched at the weapon with both hands.

"M-Miri-!" the man stammered in seeming shock as he looked pleadingly into Miranda's eyes, "How-? How could you do this to your own father!"

"You!" the courier growled, taking the sword hilt in both hands and twisting it with a grunt, "Are NOT my Father!"

The room filled with an awful laughter that seemed to come from the intercom system as the illusion exploded outwards in a hail of gritty black dust which quickly dissipated, causing Miranda to fall forward as Nezumi dropped to the floor with a piece of chewed up paper in his teeth.

"This ghost doesn't fight fair," the courier muttered, chastising herself before wiping the tears from her eyes and glanced down at Nezumi as he spat out the paper, "Good thing we don't either."

The rattata gave a smug grin as the girl scratched him affectionately between the ears. "Oh, and thank you, dear," she said with a small smile before picking up the note, "it's good to have you watching my back."

'Eh, ain't no problemo, Boss Lady,' Nezumi replied with a shrug as Miranda unraveled the note and tried to ignore the saliva.

"I thought as much," the courier sighed heavily a moment later.

'What's it say?' the rodent inquired suspiciously, tilting his head to one side as Miranda gave him a bit of a smirk.

"What else?" she replied rhetorically, crumpling up and tossing the note over her shoulder, "It says is 'You're next!'..."

Joanne rounded the corner; her pulse racing as the sounds of computer hard drives dying faded in the distance. "I, I've got to get to the center," she panted, leaning against the surprisingly sturdy fabric wall and reaching for TI-85's ball, "It, it's the only way."

The pokeball made rattling clunking noise as it opened and the magnemite that materialized before the scientist didn't look terribly happy. With a pained sound that caused sparks to fly off of her, TI-85 cast a wary glance at her trainer as she hovered unsteadily before the woman and dropped slightly before struggling to maintain altitude.

"I'm sorry," said Joanne sympathetically, her fingers gently caressing the small metal orb and giving Ti a worried look, "But I really need to get to the manual override for the blast-doors, and this ghost isn't making it easy on me."

Ti nodded slowly, shaking as another spark fired off her left-hand magnet before making a quiet humming sound and projecting a soft blue light from her eye, which formed into a simple two-  
dimensional map. A second later, and a large red circle appeared half way to the center, showing Joanne's position.

"But some of this map isn't accurate anymore," commented Joanne, pointing to the a corridor that should have been to her right, but wasn't, "Do you have anyway of adjusting the map to make it accurate?"

The magnemite shuddered a little in the attempt to make its magnets twist slightly in a shrug before altering the immediate area of her map to match their surroundings.

"For the rest of the maze, try using a fractal algorithm to predict what other changes the ghost may have made," continued Joanne, rubbing her chin thoughtfully as the magnemite concentrated, and found that the process had a calming effect on her frayed nerves, "Assume that it IS possible to reach the center, but the ghost just isn't making it easy."

TI-85 nodded and lost a little altitude as the map flickered out and a pattern of rising ones, zeros and the occasional two spread out across her eye, making random beeping and clicking noises as she computated.

A minute later, and the map reappeared before her, this time, though, the walls and passages that were different glowed green. "Good work, Ti," said Joanne with a smile, patting the magnemite on the head as some of the green corridors became rooms or became dead ends as new passages opened, "There should be some emergency stim's at the center as well, so I'll open those doors after I help you affect repairs."

The magnemite made a weak but thankful sound, her internal circuitry making an unpleasant, high-pitched whine as Ti moved forward to follow the scientist down a hallway that shouldn't have been there...

Geoff staggered down the long, seemingly endless hallway, his tazer flickering in the dim light as the security guard's nervous fingers rested against the activation switch, pressing it just enough to cause the device to spark. As he moved, Geoff's dark eyes scanned the seamless expanse of beige, hoping desperately for a side passage, or a doorway into a cubicle. But after what felt like forever, not one appeared to him.

"Oh, this is ridiculous," the security guard muttered, finally stopping and glaring at the thin wall to his right as he raised his fist, "I'll just take the easy route."

With that, Geoff smashed his fist into the wall, only to gasp and bite off a curse as pain shot up the man's arm. "What is this thing made of!" he demanded, dropping his tazer and holding his fist before giving the wall a kick, and promptly finding himself hopping up and down on one foot with what felt like a broken toe.

"Must be a desk or something behind it," the security guard muttered, glaring at the other side of the corridor before taking a deep breath and running towards it.

To Geoff's infinite surprise, the wall easily gave way as his shoulder ploughed into it. With a short-lived cry of success, he watched a portion of the wall fall away before gripping onto the sides of the entrance he'd created.

"What the-!" Geoff gasped, staring down into the black, empty void beyond the wall, watching in abject horror as the section plummeted, spiraling out of sight into and oblivion.

"Oh man..." the security guard muttered, pushing himself away from the brink and taking a few steps down the hall before turning around and reaching up to grasp the top of the opposite wall.

With a grunt, he hauled himself off his feet and looked down, expecting to see another endless void, but hoping to find an empty, normal looking cubical. Instead, Geoff found an endless landscape that moved off in all directions and was bordered only by the wall that disappeared at either horizon. But it was what covered the unending expanse of ground that caused Geoff to cry out before letting go and landing in a heap safely back in the hallway a second later.

For spread out across what was surly a barren plane were billions of fish, arranged in mountainous piles that flopped about wetly, each chanting, "Explain this! Explain this!"

Geoff closed his eyes for a moment, his breathing becoming labored as he realized he'd lost his tazer. "Just great," he muttered, staggering to his feet before noticing a strange sound of what seemed to be stone sliding over stone.

It only took the security guard a few seconds to realize, however, that the noise came from the walls of the corridor, and that they were slowly moving towards one another.

"That's it!" Geoff told himself before breaking out into a run, speeding down the constantly narrowing passageway and regretting the half dozen donuts he'd had for breakfast, "I am sooo quitting this job if I live through this...!"

Miranda walked slowly down the passageway, her eyes closed and concentrating on little more than the sound of Nezumi's voice and keeping her emotions in check. 'Away from me,' the rattata whispered a little nervously, his eyes squeezed tightly closed against further illusions as his other senses guided them through the maze as the steady breeze from the air ducts bounced off the walls and vibrated Nezumi's whiskers in just the right way to let him know where he was going, 'don't stop. Move forward.'

"You're sure you're leading us in the right direction, dear?" the courier inquired, trying to keep mental track of their lefts and rights to make sure they weren't simply walking in circles.

'Eh, I'm a rat,' Nezumi chuckled with a shrug, 'we've got a thing for mazes. Oh, towards me here.'

Miranda made a right turn and flinched as she felt herself pass through something cold and wet before entering an area where her shoes left the dull gray carpet and fell upon black and white squares of linoleum.

'Here!' he squeaked, opening his eyes and casting about the spacious room, 'I think I've found it!'

Miranda smiled as she opened her eyes, giving a laugh as Nezumi leaped off her shoulder and landed on one of the tables that filled the small, crowded lunch room. With a victorious exclamation, the rattata slid across the smooth surface and jumped atop a half eaten cheese sandwich before devouring it greedily.

"I should have known," the courier chuckled as she walked past him, examining the three other entranceways and pondering the logic of having a lunchroom at the center of a maze of cubicles.

"Only at Sylph Co," she muttered as the sound of hurried footsteps and panting caught her attention. "Nezumi," the courier hissed, raising her weapon as the rattata rose up upon his haunches, still chewing a mouthful of sandwich.

'I'mf omf iff, Boff Laffy!' Nezumi replied, desperately trying to dislodge the processed cheese from between his teeth.

Miranda nodded as she noticed the walls of one of the passages slowly coming together, accompanied by the sound of grinding stone. "He's trying to trap up," she said rhetorically, glancing around at the other exits to see what shtick the ghost was using on the other passages to imprison them, but was surprised to find them clear of obstructions.

A moment later, and the cacophony of running feet, panting and grinding stone was accompanied by the sound of a long, drawn out scream as Geoff the security guard came barreling out of the corridor and into the lunchroom just as the walls slammed closed behind him. Undaunted by his successful escape from the jaws of death, however, the man continued to run across the floor, blindly screaming louder as he ploughed into a table before flipping over it and crashing into another.

"Geoff!" exclaimed Miranda, spinning her bokken over her hand and sheathing it before running to the security guard's aid as he flailed his arms and legs helplessly, cursing bitterly in every language he could think of, "Hold on! You've made it! You're safe."

Geoff slowly opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of the girl who was even now leaning over him with a concerned look in her stormy gray eyes. "You..." he stammered, struggling a bit before a sudden pain shot up his leg and it refused to move, "You're one of 'them' aren't you!"

"What? I-" began Miranda as Geoff scrambled about, his hands checking his pockets as the security guard seemed to become more and more panicked.

"Hey, where's my tazer!" he exclaimed as Miranda stood up straighter and shook her head in dismay, "Dreck! I dropped my freakin' tazer!"

"Oh, calm down already," the courier told him, placing her hands upon her hips and doing her best impression of her mother, "I'm not one of his illusions. I'm the real thing."

"Him!" demanded Geoff, looking back up at Miranda with panicked suspicion, "How do you know it's a him? You must be one of its illusions! You're just trying to lull me into a false sense of security. That's you plan, ain't it?"

"Look," Miranda told him, bending at the knees and moving the table off Geoff's injured leg, "even if I was an illusion, this broken leg isn't. Now just lie still and try not to think about it."

"Oh sure," the security guard muttered, wincing as Miranda carefully lifted his leg and unbent it before laying it carefully down upon the floor, "You'll get me all comfortable and then drink all my blood or something!"

Miranda sighed heavily, feeling exasperated. "Why is it," the girl half-demanded as she glanced sternly back at Geoff, "That everyone seems to believe that gastlies drink blood? Is it the fangs? Cause if it is, you people are way off. I mean, a ghost doesn't even have a stomach for crying out loud! And even if they did, they still wouldn't be hemovores! They, they're..."

Geoff raised an eyebrow as Miranda took off her backpack and dug out her pokedex. "You seem to know a lot about ghosts for someone who isn't one," the security guard replied suspiciously, causing Miranda to glower back at him as she hit a few buttons in rapid succession.

"Empavores," the courier said aloud in response, closing her 'dex with a satisfying click, "They feed off emotions. Not vitae. Now, as for why I know all these things about ghosts, it's because I've heard this stuff since I was little. I'm from Lavender. If you don't know at least a little bit about ghosts, you shouldn't be living there at all. You'll probably do something stupid like go into the Tower or something..."

Just then, the sound of expensive shoes on linoleum and electrical sparks flying into the air caught Miranda's attention. Almost on instinct, the courier spun around on one foot as she drew her bokken, standing as it spun once before taking it in both hands.

"R-Rob!" the courier inquired with some surprise, lowering her weapon slightly as the scientist entered the room, using both hands to hold up TI-85 and flinching every time sparks flew up off it the magnemite.

"The one and only," the scientist replied through gritted teeth as she carefully placed Ti down on the table where Nezumi was just finishing his sandwich before noticing the security guard.

"Oh! Is he okay?" Rob inquired with a sudden burst of sympathy as he quickly rushed to the man's side.

"Ahh!" Geoff exclaimed, flailing his arms again, "It's another one! You're all out to get me!"

"Yeah, he's okay," Miranda chuckled as for the first time she noticed that the pattern of squares on the floor wasn't perfect. At the center of the room, four black squares met and seemed to have a different sheen to them in the emergency lighting.

"I'll get a stim, then," Rob replied, glancing back at Geoff as he walked quickly over to the four squares and knelt down beside them. "Hm, now if I can just remember how to open this thing..." he muttered, reaching into his lab-coat and pulling out a thin metal tube.

"Looks like a pressure gage," Miranda commented, glancing curiously at the device as Rob pushed a small button upon its silvery surface, causing the item to make a curious humming sound.

"That's just what I want people to think," the scientist chuckled as he traced the intersecting lines that joined the squares, "Keeps me from having to explain how I made it or where I got it."

With that, a soft click issued forth, and the four squares sunk slightly before parting and sliding seamlessly into the rest of the floor, revealing a large square hole at the center of the room.

"So what is it?" Miranda inquired as Rob lifted out the med-kit he found attached to the short metal wall within.

"This is where the override for the blast doors is," the scientist replied smoothly, indicating the large metal wheel at the bottom of the pit, "We have to yank it up a bit first, though."

"No, I mean the device," persisted Miranda as Rob opened the small white box and pulled out two stubby cylinders with spray nozzles at their ends before carefully checking the labels.

"Huh?" he inquired, standing up and walking over to Geoff, "I'm sorry, did you say something, Miss?"

"Dang right I did," the courier muttered, walking past Rob and giving Nezumi a secret smile as her hand slipped unnoticed into the man's pocket before taking a seat at the table with her rattata and TI-85.

"Just hold still," said Rob, kneeling down beside Geoff as the security guard cringed, "This won't hurt a bit."

"Oh sure, that's what they all say!" Geoff muttered, cringing as Rob pushed his pant leg up enough to expose his ankle, which was already turning blue, "Next you'll be saying 'don't worry this'll only hurt for a moment.' Or 'why are you screaming and crying? This doesn't hurt THAT much!'"

"You had your wisdom teeth out, didn't you?" chuckled Rob, hitting the top of the nozzle and spraying out sustained burst of something clear, wet and cool against Geoff's leg.

"Yeah? What's it to ya?" the security guard replied suspiciously as his entire leg went numb, the nanites going quickly about their work even as Rob emptied the remainder of the canister.

"Oh, nothing," the scientist said offhandedly as he stood back up and readied the second stimpack before noticing the smile on Miranda's face as she held up the curious device he'd used to open the compartment.

"You- You can't have the patent!" stammered Rob, quickly running over to her and snatching the device away from the courier, "It's mine, I tell you! All mine!"

"And ghost-balls are my Aunt Laurna's," Miranda chuckled as Rob held the device protectively for a moment, "But it's never stopped Sylph Co from offering her enough cred to by an entire continent for them."

Rob snickered, tucking the device away before sitting down in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs around the table and thoroughly spraying TI-85 with the second canister. "Okay," he relented as the tiny fractures in the magnemite's body sealed themselves, "it's called a sonic screwdriver. Just don't ask how I got it."

"Sure," said Miranda with a shrug as Ti shook himself, the sparking bursts of electricity fading as he slowly levitated into the air, running a quick diagnostic.

"Feeling better, guy?" his trainer inquired with a pleased smile as he set down the empty stimpack and Miranda raised an eyebrow.

"I thought 'he' was a girl?" the courier inquired, causing Rob to smile mysteriously as Nezumi wandered over and looked up at the floated metal orb, his nose twitching suspiciously.

'Yo, Magna-doodle!' the rattata inquired curiously, causing TI-85 to tilt in the air, his single eye focused on the small rodent, 'You don't smell, like... Alive. How is it you guys, you know... Get it on?'

TI-85 made a curious sound as his internal circuitry attempted to process the question. 'This unit is not plug and play compatible,' he said at last, causing Rob to snicker and shake his head as Nezumi gave up and wandered back to his customary position upon Miranda's shoulder.

"Hey, I can stand!" said Geoff suddenly, staggering to his feet and supporting himself upon one of the tables as Rob smiled proudly.

"Good ole nanites!" the scientist chuckled, hurrying over to the hole in the floor. "Okay, I'll need your help with this one," he instructed, grabbing hold of the wheel and yanking it up an inch with a bit of a grunt.

"Whatever," muttered Geoff, waving his hand in Miranda's direction, "Get the ghost to help you."

"I am NOT a ghost!" the courier shot back, her eyes narrowed as she hopped off the table and went to help Rob, "Why would I be helping you if I was?"

"'Who are we to question the will of those who have none,'" quoted Rob with a chuckle as they both heaved, causing the wheel to make an awful metal scraping noise as Miranda glowered at him.

"Ghost's are NOT in the Kingdom Inanimae!" she corrected bitterly, the wheel moving up a few more inches as they both strained to get it above floor level, "Why can't you people accept that!"

"You- You sound like Laurna," the scientist laughed as they both adjusted their stances and heaved the wheel up another foot in one go before it locked noisily into place, "She used to rant and rave every day about that after class."

"I'm not surprised," the courier agreed with a sudden smile as they both strained to turn the wheal to the left, "Aunt Laurna doesn't raise her voice too often. But when tourists try and tell her things like 'ghosts aren't real' or 'they're just mindless balls of gas' she tends to drop the quiet act."

Rob nodded, grunting against the strain as somewhere beneath their feet a loud clunking, grinding noise, accompanied by subtle shuddering signaled the blast doors opening in response to their efforts.

"That should do it," the scientist replied, letting go of the wheel and brushing the metal shavings off his hands, "Now we just have to get back out to the stairs."

"Yeah, if that ghost'll let us," muttered Geoff bitterly.

"Actually," Miranda pondered, tapping her chin thoughtfully, "I've been thinking about that. As near as I can tell, this is just a game to him. So far we haven't met up with anything lethal-"

"So far..." agreed Geoff, rolling his eyes and pacing impatiently with just a bit of a limp.

"As I was saying," the courier continued, shaking her head at him, "I think he's either just playing with us, or he's trying to distract us. It's possible that the ghost's just gonna let us out so we can move on to the next 'challenge'."

Rob nodded slowly, motioning TI-85 closer. "Well, I found a way to navigate the maze using Ti, so getting out's not going to be a problem either way," he explained with a prideful smile at the magnemite, "But, why do you think he's just distracting us? What else could he be doing?"

Miranda shook her head slowly, thinking her words through. "Does your mainframe here have a physical connection to the one at your main facility in Saffron?" she inquired, looking up as Rob's eyes went wide and the scientist nodded nervously, "And doesn't your company run most of the city's systems like the street lights and electricity and making sure everyone has clean water and what not?"

"Yes, but in order to hack into the mainframe in Saffron, it'd take a hacker at least a couple of days just to get past the passive security we have up," explained Rob, waving his hand dismissively, "And besides, why'd he want to that? I mean, the ghost already has a large expensive computer to play in. Why would he want to move into another one? Even if it does measure its RAM in the tens of Gigabytes..."

The courier smiled as Rob gave his head a shake, breaking the little trace he went into for a second and quickly wiped the drool away. "See?" the girl replied, "Imagine how he feels? Plus, there's another factor to consider. Ghosts need to eat."

"Oh, well that's just great!" exclaimed Geoff, throwing his hands into the air and kicking experimentally at one of the walls, "Next it'll be trying to swallow our souls or something!"

Rob laughed as Miranda rolled her eyes. "I think that's what I said to your aunt once," the scientist chuckled, turning to the security guard and shaking his head with a knowing smile, "Don't worry. So long as we all stay awake, the ghost can only feed upon our stronger emotions."

"Like pessimism," Miranda chuckled.

"And fear," added Rob, his voice trailing off for a moment as his smile died and he turned back to the courier, "Wait, if he gets access to Saffron's mainframe, wouldn't that mean he could cause all sorts of havoc without having to waste too much of his own power?"

Miranda nodded. "Yes. And with Saffron's population, even a few days of utter chaos would create something of an emotional storm on the ethereal."

"Meaning?" inquired Geoff skeptically.

"Meaning," explained Miranda in a worried tone, "that as the emotional build up runs along that weak ley-line you guys have that runs from Saffron all the way to the Tower, you'd have every hungry ghost in Lavender coming down on you for the world's biggest buffet. That in turn, would only cause more fear, probably fatalities, and judging by your luck so far, probably some ghost would think it was funny to overload that nuclear reactor you have in the Sylph Co Arcology."

"Um, no one's supposed to know about that," added Rob a little nervously.

"Well, at least we have a few days, right?" inquired Geoff hopefully, making Miranda shake her head in response.

"I'd say a few hours at best," she replied, "he's not a human. He's a ghost. There's things he can do to bypass security that I'd wager even Ti hasn't thought of yet."

"Hey..." pouted Rob as TI-85's magnets drooped a little, "that's not fair."

"We'll worry about that later," the courier muttered, taking one last look around the room before heading for the nearest exit, "Right now we're on the clock, and we need Ti to show us the way out of here."

The magnemite made a happy sound as he hovered more proudly in the air before projecting the map image once again. 'Hey, ya think we can trust the fridge magnet?' Nezumi whispered, eying the blue/green image suspiciously, 'If Fang Face can do stuff with machines, couldn't he be doin' somethin' ta Ole One Eye too?'

The courier glanced over her shoulder, watching as Rob and TI-85 stepped forward to lead the way into the labyrinth. "I don't know," she whispered back, scratching the rattata under his chin reassuringly, "But right now, we don't have a lot of choice. We'll just have to wait and see, dearest..."

As promised, the blast doors were partially wedged open when they arrived back on the stairwell. And much to Geoff's relief, the words had returned to normal. With held breaths, Miranda followed Professor Kipp through the narrow gap between the two-foot thick blast door and wall, soon followed by Geoff, who almost seemed to be in a better mood.

"At least this is all down hill, and we can't expect anymore surprises," the security guard muttered quietly to himself as he glanced at the thick metal door that left only half the flight of stairs accessible, only to suddenly hear an ominous rumble and the straining of metal as the entire building seemed to shake around them.

"Geoff!" exclaimed both Miranda and Rob as they turned around in time to see the blast door sliding quickly closed, threatening to cut the man off at the midsection.

"Crud!" the security guard exclaimed, his dark eyes going wide before leaping forward, and diving down the stairs as the blast door slammed shut behind him with an ominously echoing -Boom!-..

"No!" exclaimed Rob as Geoff ploughed into both himself and Miranda, sending them all tumbling painfully down to the next landing where they landed in a tangle of limbs.

"So much for non-lethal!" grumbled Geoff, reaching back to yank Rob's tazer out of his back.

"Ya know, you could have kept your mouth shut," the scientist replied, shoving Geoff's foot out of his face as they untangled themselves.

"Can we expect any other surprises?" Miranda inquired, shuffling backwards until she was clear before standing up.

Rob thought for a moment as Geoff stood and dusted himself off. "Well," he said thoughtfully, "there are some extra security measures in place just in the off chance we were attacked."

"Attacked?" the courier laughed, picking up Nezumi and checking to make sure his pained expression as he limped towards her was just an act, "By what?"

Rob shrugged; making sure his tazer was okay. "Oh, mostly just by the other people who work here," he explained, "When you rent out more than half your office space to other companies you can't be too careful. Especially not with the research we do here."

"Anything we need to worry about?"

Rob shook his head. "Naw, we'd have to turn them on manually from Iago's office," he explained, "But I guess someone could always get around that and just access the security program itself to turn them on..."

"Gee, thanks Rob," muttered Geoff as a loud, annoying ringing sound issued from the fire alarm, and the sprinklers turned on, drenching them with water, "You DO know the ghost can hear us through the intercom system, right!"

The scientist shook his head. "No, this isn't it," he replied, raising his voice above the alarm bell, "we're still okay."

"Actually," corrected Miranda as Nezumi took a small umbrella out from seemingly nowhere and held it above his head with a sarcastic grin in TI-85's direction, the pokemon looking distinctively unhappy about the situation, "I think I see what he's doing."

"Oh?" the others inquired as the courier headed down the stairs, her shoes now squishing loudly as she walked.

"He's making sure Rob can't use his tazer, and Ti can use electrical techniques until we get somewhere drier," the courier explained, causing Rob's expression to become stricken.

"What!" he exclaimed, tears forming in his eyes even as the cold rain from the sprinklers poured over his face, "I can't use my tazer! Oh, the humanity!"

"Which probably means he's got something planned for us," Miranda continued, listening intently as something within the walls began to shift mechanically, "Something we'll probably need to fight our way past."

"Um, I think we're going to have about as much prep-time as an Ontario teacher, though," muttered Geoff, catching Miranda's eye and pointing down to where the landing they stood on began to rise and shift as the stairs rattled and squeaked before turning like Venetian blinds.

"Is this one of your 'can't possibly be used against us' security measures?" the courier demanded as the landing they stood on suddenly tilted at a sharp angle as the steps all became a slanted waterfall and the group found themselves sliding down it towards the next landing.

"I- It's not my fault- Ah, Geoff you-!" exclaimed Rob as he fell upon his back, only to have the security guard trip and land hard upon his stomach as Miranda fell forward and grabbed his ankles.

"What!" replied the security guard innocently, turning his head as Rob's tazer bounced off the wall and flew out of his hand before rebounding off TI-85's left magnet and sending the construct spinning as the group hit the next landing.

"Try and grab the walls!" shouted Miranda over the sound of the artificial rain and Nezumi's laughter in her ear, all the while moving her legs apart, pressing her feet against the all too smoothly polished walls as the landing tilted to allow them continued passage.

"Um... Okay!" muttered Rob through gritted teeth, grabbing Geoff by the arm and trying to shove the security guard off his stomach.

"Not me, you idiot!" the man exclaimed, glaring over his shoulder at Rob before falling off as they rounded the corner and sliding half way up the wall before continuing down the water-slide in a continuingly faster spiral to whatever awaited them at the bottom.

"Geoff!" Miranda shouted, ducking her head as Geoff rolled over her and grabbed hold of her ankle, "Hold on! I have plan!"

"Oh, yeah! Like that's reassuring!" he called back as the next turn came much faster and the dizzying pace began making him feel queasy.

"Professor, hold still!" the girl ordered, waiting for the next turn before pushing down against Rob's ankles and letting momentum throw her a little higher.

"Sorry!" she exclaimed, reaching out with her arms to grab the scientist's shoulders but instead having her hands land upon his chest.

"I'm NOT a toboggan-!" began Professor Kipp before suddenly blushing deeply with a horrified look upon his face.

"Oh dear," muttered Miranda suddenly looking hideously embarrassed as she deliberately moved one hand after the other onto Rob's shoulders, ignoring the security guard's screaming as they turned again, "I- I wasn't sure, but I guess I know now..."

"I think we have bigger problems," the scientist replied, breathing again as the courier removed her hands.

'Told ya,' chuckled Nezumi, sitting atop Miranda's head and using all four paws to cling to her now tangled wet hair.

The courier glanced upwards with a bit of a scowl before looking forward and seeing the problem. Their seemingly endless, spiraling decent had finally gotten them near the bottom, as evidenced by the large '#3' painted in white letters on the door they slid past.

"What's at the bottom!" the girl asked, dreading the answer as TI-85 finally caught up with them.

"You don't wanna know!" answered Rob, lifting his head awkwardly and smiling as he caught sight of the magnemite. "Ti!" he exclaimed as the strange pokemon swooped around the corner after them, "There's a fire door coming up! I need to you to blast it! Just take out the sprinkler above the door first, or you'll get us too! Understand!"

The pokemon tilted forward in a nod, and sped off ahead of them as the group rounded the second floor landing. "What's he doing?" Miranda asked, hearing the sound of metal crashing into metal with something giving away with a whine of protest. A second later, and a loud unpleasant sound, reminiscent of tinfoil in a microwave, filled the area just a head.

"The boys down in R&D call it 'zap-cannon' for short," explained Rob with a prideful smile as the area lit up with a blinding white light reminiscent of an arc welder before an explosion and the sound of sizzling, hotly oozing metal reached their collective ears, "But I think 'plasma bolt' is much more stylish!"

"Whatever works," the courier commented as they slid down the last fight of stairs, through a partially melted doorway and most of the way across the linoleum floor of the lobby before skidding to a slow, wet stop.

"Are we dead?" inquired Geoff as Miranda yanked her feet free of his iron grip and rolled off of Rob.

"Almost, but not quite," the courier replied, looking over at the glass doors to where sunlight should have been streaming through, only to see a wall of cold steel barring the passage.

"It's the ablative armor," explained Rob, standing up and slipping off his soaking wet lab coat, "We deploy it incase of an attack, or if something dangerous gets loose."

"So much for back-up then," muttered Miranda a little glumly.

'No more back-up for you!' quoted Nezumi with a sarcastic chuckle to hide his nervousness, 'Eat more vegetables!'

Bob blinked at his suddenly blushing stepdaughter.

"I met Zack in Neon Town this one time when I was still traveling with Joshua. We decided to hit this buffet house," she quickly explained, avoiding his gaze, "And well, Zack went a little... Shall we say 'overboard' and ate more than is humanly possible. Mostly the expensive stuff too! That was when this large Chinese chef guy ran out of the kitchen wielding a cleaver. He glared at Zack while shaking the knife threateningly and yelled out loud enough to be heard for a least three block in kinda this broken English, 'No more meat for you! Eat more vegetables!' For a while there, it occasionally came up in conversation."

Her stepfather nodded, hiding behind his warm mug of tea where it was safe from the courier's insanity. "Go on..."

"So how do we get down to the basement from here?" Miranda inquired as the three made their way towards a pair of discreet looking doors marked with the symbols for male and female.

"There's another staircase," explained Rob, pushing his way into the women's washroom and causing the courier to stammer for a moment before glancing at her hands and blushing.

"Look, I, uh..." she muttered as the scientist lead the way into the antiseptic feeling room and quickly disappeared into one of the stalls, "I wanna apologize for earlier."

"Huh? For what?" he inquired, banging against the thin metal wall as he strained against something.

"Well, for accidentally groping you earlier," the courier replied, walking to the wall of sinks before depositing her backpack on the counter and carefully extricating Nezumi from her hair.

"No, no, it's alright," came the now feminine sounding voice as Miranda removed her courier jacket before undoing the dark tangles of her hair and wringing it out over the sink, "It happens now and then. I've mostly gotten used to it."

"I still apologize," the courier called back, her eyes going wide as she watched the water that fell from her hair turn bright red as it pooled in the sink and refused to drain away.

The scientist laughed as she stepped out of the stall followed by TI-85, seemingly oblivious to the mess Miranda was making in the sink. 'It's just an illusion,' the girl told herself, closing her eyes and running her fingers through the long ebony locks, 'he's just messing with my mind again.'

Joanne shrugged, checking herself in the mirror before hanging her lab coat up on one of the hooks near the door. "The only thing I'm concerned about right now, is having to go down into a room full of sensitive computer equipment while being soaking wet," she explained, resigned to wearing her other damp clothing, "If we had time, I'd suggest using the blow-driers, but I think we'll just have to deal with it."

The courier nodded slowly, opening her eyes and trying to ignore the fact that her reflection was smiling evilly and waving back at her. "Another problem too," Miranda added, shivering at the thought and trying to ignore the odd assortment of squirming centipedes, snails, and little wagging tails that fell from her hair to splash down into the bloody sink, "It's probably going to be cold down there with the mainframe's air-conditioning."

"That must be part of the reason he set the sprinklers on us," the scientist agreed, shaking her head as she pulled open the door and Miranda finally gave up, simply tying her hair back again, "Oh, well. I guess it's better than fighting one of Ziffle's escaped lab experiments..."

Geoff pushed open the door to the men's washroom and exhaled loudly as he struggled to remove his uniform jacket which was now a size too small. "Stupid Sylph Co," the muttered, tossing the garment onto the countertop before leaning warily against it in front of a mirror, "Who ever heard of issuing dry-clean only uniforms! Yeesh!"

But his reverie was suddenly interrupted by a sudden flush of one of the toilets. The security guard winced as he slowly opened his eyes and said the words he hated to say, but knew he couldn't stop himself from saying. "Um, hello?" he called, turning around slowly and wishing his tazer hadn't gotten lost in the maze, "is there somebody in here?"

Geoff's only reply was a second flushing from a second stall. "Oh, they really don't pay me enough for this crap," he muttered, stepping nervously forward, leaving wet footprints as he went.

But as Geoff pushed the first stall door open, a third toilet flushed farther down the row. "Hello?" the security guard called again, flinging the first door open all the way only to find nothing, "Look, this isn't funny!"

As if in response, a forth flushed.

"Enough of this," the security guard muttered, walking down the row towards the back of the room, simply flinging each of the doors open in turn yet finding nothing.

And as the last door swung shut, the entire row of toilets flushed simultaneously, causing Geoff to nearly pull out what remained of his short, dark hair. "Ah! I can't take this anymore!" he shouted, running blindly for the door, "If they don't fire me for this I'm gonna quit...!"

As Miranda and Joanne stepped out of the woman's washroom, they could hear Geoff's prolonged yell a moment before he came crashing through the door of the men's. It was also all they could do to keep from laughing however, as the security guard ran across the lobby, his thin form wrapped up in toilet paper like some kind of B-movie mummy.

"I think the ghost found him," the courier commented rhetorically as they turned to watch Geoff run by, bits of wet paper flying off him as he passed the empty receptionist's desk and slammed into the front doors of Sylph Co.

"Open! Open! Open!" he demanded, as the automatic doors slid open, but the ablative armor blocked his way, forcing Geoff to pound his fists futilely against them.

"Geoff! It's okay," called Joanne, jogging after the security guard as he slowly slumped to the floor, looking more pale than usual, "We're almost there. We'll have this ghost back in his ball in like, fifteen minutes at most."

"You, you're sure?" inquired Geoff, his body shaking with both cold and fright, barely noticing the woman slide her arm around him as she tore away the wrappings.

"Positive," the scientist assured, her tone quiet and soothing as she linked an arm through Geoff's and pulled him to his feet, "Once we reach the mainframe, me and Ti can flush him out easily."

Geoff nodded slowly, leaning against the much taller woman as she walked him back to the receptionist's desk where Miranda waited for them. "The door's beside the elevator," explained Joanne, nodding to a rather plain section of wall as the courier followed her gaze, "But I think we can take a minute for Geoff to recover."

"No, no," he muttered, shaking his head, taking several deep breaths as he leaned over the desk, "I'm fine. Just go."

"It'd be better if we stuck together," commented Miranda, her gaze tracking Joanne as the woman took out the sonic screwdriver again, traversing the room and wielding the item with a wide grin.

"Hey, I ain't sayin' for ya to leave me behind!" the security guard exclaimed in sudden alarm, causing Miranda to smile as a portion of the wall clicked and slid into itself, revealing a dark, lightless passage beyond.

"He's only picking on you because you're letting him get to you, ya know," cautioned the courier as Joanne waved them over and TI-  
85 began to glow with a strange golden light.

"Oh yeah, and like you're not scared," the security guard muttered, following Miranda to the doorway as the glowing magnemite lit up a flight of plas-crete steps just beyond the doorway.

"I never said I wasn't. I'm just used to not letting ghosts think they can push me around, that's all," the courier replied, glancing curiously at Joanne, "So um, what's with the secret passage?"

Joanne chuckled, smiling mysteriously as she took the first step into the cool air of the stairwell. "Oh, mostly paranoia," she said with some small satisfaction, the far off whirring of cooling fans seeming something of a reassuring lullaby to the woman as she descended the steps, "But it's also just a Sylph Co thing. At the head office, we have a series of teleporters, but they're awfully expensive to install and maintain. Also, I'm not exactly inclined to trust such things with a mischievous ghost loose."

"I seem to recall my Aunt mentioning those," pondered Miranda, both her and Nezumi suddenly shivering as they entered the eerie golden twilight, "apparently one of her classes was on the other side of the campus and she used to have to take a teleporter to get to class on time in the morning."

Joanne's smile was reminiscent as they hit the first landing and moved farther down the plas-crete steps into the looming darkness. "Did Laurna also tell you about the time she took the wrong one?" the woman inquired, glancing over her shoulder to make sure everyone was still with her.

Miranda shook her head in reply. "Nope," she responded, tensing a little as something warm and furry leaned against her neck, only to quickly realize the cold was getting to Nezumi.

The scientist sighed, shaking her head as the courier simply took the small rodent in her hands and held him close to her chest. "Oh, she wound up outside one of my professor's classrooms... I think we were studying geo-parazoology that semester... Anyway, she almost walked in on my professor and some woman. Hm. I wonder whatever happened to him? Oh! Um, we're here."

The flight of stairs ended in what appeared to be a small, empty room. But as Joanne raised her sonic screwdriver again and switched the device on, a section of the wall once again slid away. This time, however, brilliant white light poured into the small, dark area, blinding everyone except TI-85 momentarily as a cold breeze rushed out and the sound of humming computer fans and clicking, spinning hard drives filled their ears.

"Behold!" Joanne exclaimed dramatically, holding her arms into the air and standing in the doorway so that she blocked the blinding light, "SkyNet! Ain't it pretty?"

"It looks like an oil-drum," commented Miranda, ducking under Joanne's arm to examine the enormous, cylindrically shaped piece of machinery that took up most of the far wall of the somewhat large room.

"Hey now," the scientist replied, stepping over a mass of cables that snaked its way across the floor from the mainframe and passed before the only exit, "don't be hurting its feelings. It's already got an inferiority complex because of AIVAS in Saffron."

The courier chuckled, shivering as she stepped into the icy cold room and shook her head in wonder at the array of thick black cables that covered most of the floor, the wide metal pipes, clearly marked "DNGN", and the curious glass tubes filled with bubbling eerie green liquid all of which connected SkyNet to the walls, ceiling, the and occasional standard computer terminal.

"Still have that pokeball?" Joanne inquired, seemingly unconcerned by the constant flow of cold air from the many air ducts that opened into the room and kept the mainframe from over heating.

Miranda nodded as the woman hopped carefully over a particularly large bundle of thick black cables and approached the large screen built into the side of SkyNet

"Then you'd best get yourself over here," she cautioned in a mildly worried tone, typing several commands into the awkwardly placed keyboard beside the display, "if this works, we're gonna have one very upset gastly on our hands!"

"Okay," the courier replied a little nervously as she entered the room and glanced down at Nezumi. "I'm gonna need both you and Umi ready to help if this goes wrong," she explained, watching her step as they traversed the room, "You up for it?"

'Ah, it ain't nothin' but a wee little ghostie, Boss Lady,' the rattata chuckled, waving a forepaw dismissively, 'Heck, I'll bet I could take him on even without Draco-Babe's help!'

"You aren't THAT good, dear," the courier chuckled as they reached the mainframe and she set Nezumi down on one of the free patches of floor before reaching for the other pokeball she carried.

"I'm sure this'll work," assured Joanne with a confident smile as the courier held up the blue and white ball, "I mean, what could possibly go wrong?"

Miranda glanced at her with a raised eyebrow. "Umi, come ye forth," she replied flatly, causing the ball to click out and send out a crimson glow that ached towards the floor beside Nezumi.

"What?" inquired Joanne, holding her hands out helplessly as the courier shook her head and turned to the suddenly materialized dratini at her feet who immediately began shivering in the cold of the computer room.

"Sorry, dear," said Miranda apologetically as she knelt down and held out her hands to cup Umi's small, snouted face as the dratini made an unhappy sound and wrapped her tail around the courier's leg, "I know you hate the cold, but we have a very serious problem. I can promise, however, that after we're done, we'll hit those hot springs you adore so much."

Umi looked up at Miranda, her multifaceted eyes swirling from pale green to golden. 'I, I can handle it then,' she promised in a shaking, stammering voice as she uncoiled her tail, 'Just promise me you'll make this quick!'

Miranda smiled, affectionately scratching the little dragon's eye ridges as she took out the black and gray ghost-ball. "No worries," she promised, glancing at Nezumi with a smile and scratching him between the ears, "with any luck, you guys won't even have to anything."

'Aww, but mom!' chuckled Nezumi, suddenly cringing in mock-terror, as Umi turned on him with eyes that suddenly flared orange.

"Okay, ya ready?" inquired Joanne as TI-85 hovered before the monitor and switched on her dataflow beam.

The courier nodded as she stood. "As we'll ever be," she promised, clutching the ball as it expanded in her hand, watching intently as Joanne's fingers danced across the vertically placed keyboard and Ti's magnets spun slowly with concentration.

"Almost there..." Joanne commented, beads of sweat forming on her brow as she typed faster, "Oh crap!"

"What!" inquired both Miranda and Geoff at the same time as one of the blinking greenlights along the side of the cylinder became solid red.

"He's almost gained access to the computer in Saffron!"

"Can you stop him?" the courier inquired, gulping down her nervousness as Joanne gave a short nod.

"No worries!" she laughed nervously, "I have a whole two seconds to spare!"

With that, however, TI-85 let out a pained shriek as the data flow reversed and the monitor exploded outwards in a shower of sparks and shards of glass.

"Ti!" shouted Joanne turning away from the keyboard and half lunging forward to grab the magnemite out of the air before they both fell to the cable strewn floor.

"Joanne!" Miranda exclaimed, panic suddenly overwhelming her as several other lights turned red forming the words "You're Next!" before a dozen other switched to a constant glow, leaving only a handful still blinking green, "The ghost! It's gonna-!"

But as the courier spoke, all but one of the lights switched to red, and as the last green one flickered, the omnipresent hum of SkyNet's many cooling fans ceased, replaced by a sudden loud rattle and the sound of sound of a very large computer powering down as all of the lights went out, only to replaced by the same red illumination that filled the rest of the office building.

"What?" inquired Geoff as everyone into the room turned to see him with a large plug in his hand, swinging it idly in the air as he spoke, "I figured we could just unplug it for crying out loud!"

Miranda let out a slow breath as she turned to Joanne in the sudden near darkness. "That works too," she chuckled, only to have SkyNet's ominous silence suddenly replaced by a distant, echoing clang, and a few muttered curses somewhere within the machine.

The courier's eyes widened as Joanne looked up at her with a stricken expression. "Shh," the girl cautioned, slowly sliding her pokedex out of her pocket before opening it and placing it carefully atop the mainframe, "This might not work..."

With a nervous shiver, Miranda reached her shaking hand up and switched the device on. Its small internal fan immediately broke the still silence and the glow of the dex's tiny screen provided for an eerie glow as something within the mainframe made a quiet chuckling sound.

As the group watched, a dark shape partially emerged from SkyNet. The rolling shadows seemed to ooze forth from the thick, tri-  
tanium casing, only to surround the small purple plastic casing of the Parazoological Encyclopedia & Data Input/Output Device like a hungry shadow.

Miranda glanced at Umi and Nezumi, raising her hand to clam them as a pair of malevolent red eyes burned within the dark mist before flickering out with a frightful chuckle as the ghost vanished inside the courier's pokedex.

"Now what?" inquired Joanne, getting to her feet and watching with morbid fascination as Miranda reached up and took hold of the device.

"You'll see," the girl whispered, her expression twisting to one of disgust as the air filled with an wet, squishy, crackling sound, and the 'Dex pulled away from the top of the mainframe followed by a long trail of thin, greenish translucent goo, "Okay, this I think this is a good thing. Here, hold this."

Joanne made half a sound of protest as the courier handed her the ectoplasm covered pokedex, and nearly dropped it as the girl reached underneath it to scoop the goo away with her bare hand.

"Wha- What are you doing!" the woman demanded in a harsh whisper as Miranda slid her bokken out and wiped the handful of viscous, oozing mass of solidified ephemerae along the wooden blade of her sword.

"That's not gonna hold his interest for long," she explained, nodding to her pokemon, causing Umi to take deep breath, and Nezumi to concentrate before suddenly bursting into a bright silvery glow and stand upon his hind legs dramatically, "I think it's best if we hit the gastly hard when we comes out. After all, these ghostballs aren't perfect, and I don't want him just letting himself out or something."

"They- They can do that!" exclaimed Joanne all too loudly as the pokedex began to shake in her hand and an image of herself appeared upon the little screen.

The courier nodded, her reply suddenly cut off by a peculiar sound from the 'Dex. A voice that sounded both eerie and nerve gratingly annoying suddenly switched on, filling the room with a few stammered words.

"P- P- Professor Joanna Kipp," the device intoned as Miranda's jaw dropped.

"No way!" the courier exclaimed angrily, glowering darkly at the device, "I ripped the freakin' speakers out of that ruddy thing myself so I'd never have to hear it talk again!"

The pokedex continued unabated, however, running down the list of scientific terms to describe a human being. When it neared the end of its speech, however, the voice let out a quiet chuckle. "Species, human. Resistances; None. Weaknesses; Fighting techniques and..." as the voice spoke, the lights in the room dimmed slightly as its chuckling voice became a loud, screeching laugh of triumph, "Ghost techniques!"

"Get it away!" the scientist exclaimed in a panic, slamming the 'dex's cover shut before tossing it across the room.

"Get ready!" cautioned Miranda, watching it pass her in the air, and turning to face the device before it hit the ground, "Here it comes!"

As the pokedex clattered to the floor, a heavy silence came over the room, and everyone held their breath. Waiting.

"That things not going to be very happy when it gets out of there, is it?" came Geoff's nervous tone, speaking rhetorically, watching as Miranda's pokedex shook violently of its own accord, sending sparks flying in all directions and white smoke from somewhere within. This was soon accompanied by a terrible grinding, knocking sound of most of the hard drive being horrible scragged.

Miranda nodded, glancing over at Rob. "You wouldn't happen to have another magnemite would you?" she asked as a small explosion caused the pokedex's cover to open up revealing the darkened, cracked screen, across which scrolled the phrase, "You're next..."

"Guess it's just up to you two now then," said Miranda glancing at her pokemon, who nodded slowly as they watched their trainer's pokedex go through its final death throws.

With a loud -pop!-, several buttons flew off SkyNet's keyboard and the maintenance panel blew apart as the gastly within it grew wary of the toy and sprang into the air, causing Umi to make an angry hissing sound, her eyes glowing blood red as Nezumi gritted his teeth, growling at the now laughing ghost.

"NOW!" shouted Miranda, bringing her ectoplasm smeared blade down upon the little ghost, cleaving him almost in half as Umi spit a walnut sized ball of flame, and Nezumi leaped in the air at it.

With a shriek of pain and rage, the ghost's body shimmered as Umi's small fireball exploded against him, and Nezumi's glowing teeth sank into his ephemera. "Gassst!" the gastly hissed as a wave of dark purple unlight expanded out in all directions, throwing his three attackers backwards as he flew forward.

"Miranda!" exclaimed Joanne, running forward and catching the girl as she stumbled backwards and landed in the woman's arms.

"Never mind me!" she exclaimed, irritatedly, "don't let that freakin' ghost get back to the mainframe!"

"Oh yeah, I'll get right on that," commented Geoff in a bitterly sarcastic tone as Nezumi shook off the effects the 'nightshade' attack and scurried quickly over to Umi.

'Ya okay, Draco-babe?' he inquired as the little dragon reared up like an angry serpent, baring her small sharp teeth and hissing at the wounded ghost before glancing down at Nezumi and making a small reassuring sound.

"He's headed for the vents!" called Miranda, struggling to her feet and throwing her bokken like a javelin at the gastly even as he phased through the air vent grating and disappeared, his sinister laughter echoing back to them as the courier's sword bounced off the grate and landed on the floor with a damp splatting sound.

'I'm on it!' assured Umi, already inhaling deeply and letting loose with another small, exploding fireball.

The rest of the group shielded themselves as the grating exploded outwards, sending shards of metal in all directions, but the dratini was already slithering towards the opening.

'Hold up, Draco-Babe!' exclaimed Nezumi, running after her and grabbing the end of Umi's tail as she leapt the short distance up to the ragged square hole.

"Try to herd him back this way!" called Miranda, running over almost immediately and leaning into the ventilation shaft.

"Oh yeah, right!" exclaimed Geoff, exasperatedly, his small frame starting to shake more than usual, "That's just a freakin' great plan! Send it back to finish us off!"

"Hey, at least you're pokemon didn't nearly die because of that thing," scolded Joanne, clutching TI-85's pokeball protectively.

"Better her than me," muttered the security guard as Miranda picked up her sword and stood beside the vent opening, smearing a fresh coat of ectoplasm along the wooden blade.

"I- I wish I could help you," said Rob, glancing nervously at the dark opening as strange eerie sounds issued forth, followed by the scraping of claws on the slippery metal surfaces.

"I just hope they're all right," commented Miranda, not really hearing either of them as she did the only thing she could do. Wait...

Nezumi let go of the little dragon's tail almost immediately after she'd slithered her way into the small, confined ventilation system. "I say we try to get ahead of him, draco-babe," commented Nezumi, panting as he tried to keep up with his long, serpentine friend, "Maybe rip him a new one a couple more times before headin' him back to the Boss-Lady!"

"No guts no glory?" chuckled the dratini mirthfully, narrowing her eyes as she listened to the gastly's distant, echoing laughter and trying to track him solely by sound.

"Hey, Miri's only got one of 'em special balls," Nezumi replied, trying to ignore the strange muscle cramps he'd received when the gastly had nightshaded him, "Might as well make sure it counts!"

"Still," said Umi thoughtfully, making a sharp right turn that the rattata was barely able to make as well, "Do we really want a ghost with us? They aren't exactly trustworthy, and they tend to make people unhappy. I don't like that."

"Eh, she can always trade 'im," the rattata commented, leaping over Umi in an attempt to make the next turn.

"Oh dear," the serpentine dragon muttered as they approached the next T shaped intersection.

"Wha-?" began Nezumi, his claws clamoring for purchase on the smooth shiny metal floor as Umi came to an immediate halt, smiling as the rattata went careening into the wall.

"You okay?" asked Umi, her voice suddenly full of concern, her sediment echoed by her sudden change in eye colour.

"Yup, yeah," replied Nezumi, staggering to his feet and looking suspiciously in both directions, "Only hurt my pride. So, any idea which way Fang Face went?"

Umi extended her neck, carefully examining both their options as her eyes shifted to a dark, suspicious purple. "We'll need to split up," she concluded after a moment, the ghost's laughter became more distant, "We don't have much time, and I'm not sure which way he went."

"Probably straight on through," muttered the rattata, glancing back at his now crooked tail, "solid wall don't stop ghosts, Draco-Babe."

Umi nodded, her eyes lighting up the Westward tunnel as she crouched low and prepared to give chase in that direction. "True," she agreed, her voice becoming a low whisper, "But he's hurt. Phasing through too many solid objects would be bad for him right now. He'd be risking disruption."

"Dis- wha-?" began Nezumi, shaking his head in dismay. "Dragons!" he sighed, chuckling under his voice, "gotta love 'em! All right, I'll take this tunnel. See ya before you miss me!"

Umi smiled as she heard the little rattata's claws scrambling over the floor as Nezumi tore off as fast as he could, invoking 'quick attack' to make up for lost time and obviously barely avoiding crashing into another wall judging by the sounds of the curses he let out.

"I already do, big brother," said the dratini mostly to herself with a smile before slithering off down her own tunnel.

Nezumi slowed his pace as the sounds of the ghost's passage grew louder. Somewhere up ahead, possibly only a few meters off, the rattata could hear the ghost muttering angrily to himself, obviously lost.

"Hey! Yo, Fang Face!" called Nezumi, keeping low against a wall and concentrating on the information his whiskers told him. Movement, not far ahead, definitely not just the constant rush of air that flowed through the human made tunnels.

"What'cha want, Cheese Breath!" taunted the gastly, both their voices echoing back and forth, distorting the distance between them. But Nezumi's senses told him the ghost was close. Very close, and slowly drawing nearer.

"What do ya say you just save us a whole lot a trouble and come quietly," offered the rattata, focusing his chi and causing his whole body to glow with a silvery light once more.

"Ha! Yeah right!" laughed the gastly, suddenly noticing the silvery glow not far off, "But uh, tell me, Buck-Tooth, how many times do ya think you can keep doin' that trick a yours?"

"As many times as I need to kick your vaporous butt!" taunted Nezumi right back, smiling in spite of himself, a part of him actually liking the mischievous spirit.

"Think so?" inquired the gastly with a sinister chuckle.

"You bet!"

"Alrighty then..." called the ghost, his voice suddenly fading, trailing off ominously as Nezumi crept cautiously forward, listening for any sounds of movement as his whiskers twitched in response to a new presence. Something large. Something larger than the gastly had suddenly come out of nowhere, displacing a lot more air.

"Fang Face?" called Nezumi, but there was no response. Only the quiet, slow, methodical clicking of claws across the metal floor a few meters ahead of him met the rattata's ears.

Instinctively, Nezumi stood on his hind legs and sniffed the stale, filtered air. "No..." he whispered to himself, catching the scent he dreaded, but couldn't believe could actually be in such a confined space, "That's not possible. It's a trick! That ghost's just trying to scare me."

The rattata gritted his teeth, wincing as a low, sinister, and above all hungry voice suddenly echoed through the tunnels, causing all his fur to stand on end. "Mmmmeeeeeooowwwthhh."

The single hungry word echoed through Nezumi's mind even as the sound died away. "It's a trick. It's not real," muttered the rattata, pressing harder against the wall as he forced himself to glace around the corner, fighting off the instincts that screamed at him to run.

With the utmost care, Nezumi peered carefully around the corner with one wide, frightened eye. What he saw made him jerk back immediately, his breath coming out in ragged gasps as his little heart pounded loudly in his chest.

For in that second, Nezumi had caught a glimpse of a shadow. The shadow of a long tail that coiled at the end much like his own, only it swished lazily back and forth as its owner casually stalked its prey. Him.

"I- I have to be brave," shuddered the rattata, "I mustn't run away... I have to make Miri proud. She's counting on me. And so is Draco-Babe."

"Oooowwwth...?" came a questioning, hungry voice, causing Nezumi to almost scream. Primal fear gripped the little rattata, and vague, distant memories began to creep back into his consciousness. A memory so horrible that he would have blocked it out if hadn't have happened when he was only a few days old.

As his wide, frightened eyes watched a long, catlike shadow creep across the wall in front of him, Nezumi recalled his first, long suppressed memory. In that moment, he recalled staring up, terrified and paralyzed with fear as an enormous persian stared down at him, hissing and licking her lips hungrily at him.

"Yesss," the white furred feline had hissed, stalking forward, casually playing with her food, "You shall make a lovely snack for my kittens..."

"NO!" shouted a voice, startling the enormous predator for a moment. It wasn't another persian, or even a rattata. It was human, "He's mine! You can't have him!"

Nezumi looked up at the towering biped and blinked. His nose told him that immediately that the human girl was someone he trusted. But his young mind still didn't fully understand why.

"Back off, kitty," the girl warned, brandishing something long and curved that caused the cat to make threatening noises.

The rattata could smell his human's fear, but knew somehow that she was willing to lay down her life for him. For the first time he could remember, his heart swelled with love, and he leapt to one side, hiding behind her leg as the dark shadow of the persian moved forward with frightening speed.

"Noooo!" cried Nezumi as he heard the girl scream, swinging her weapon in a wide arc and smashing the persian in the side of the head.

But even as the awful, ear splitting sound of cracking bone filled his ears over the feline's angry wail, Nezumi felt the girl shift her feet as though expecting another attack.

"Now you die, huuuuuman!" hissed the angry, wounded feline and Nezumi closed his eyes tight, trembling as he felt his whiskers twitch in response to the persian's sudden swift movements.

"No! No! No!" the rattata cried as he herd the girl's screaming fill his ears over the sounds of her clothing being torn apart by the terrible feline's 'fury swipes' attack.

But hope burgeoned with in him as a new sound filled Nezumi's ears. "Die! Die! Die!" the girl exclaimed, hot tears spilling down her face, filling the air with a salty quality, mixing with the smell of her blood.

The sounds were accompanied by several loud, sickening cracking noises as the girl's weapon smashed down hard upon the persian, again and again, causing it to howl in pain and rage before bounding off with numerous broken bones and contusions.

"It- It's okay now," he heard the girl pant as she fell to her knees and glanced back at him, "It's gone, dearest."

The baby rattata glanced up at his trainer, his heart swelling with love and concern for the human who'd saved his life. "Ra!" he squeaked incoherently, causing her to smile and make a strange sound that made him happy.

"I love you!" she laughed, dropping the bokken and carefully picking him up so she could hold him close...

Nezumi shook his head, clearing the thoughts from his mind. "She needs me now," he told himself, grasping at the last shreds of his courage and weaving them together, fighting desperately against the instinct that told him to run for his life, "And I'm NOT letting her down now! And besides, it's just a stupid meowth!"

With a fierce battle cry that sounded more like a half frightened squeak, Nezumi bounded out of hiding. With his body suddenly glowing silvery once again, the rattata leapt at the shadowy figure he saw before him and bit down as hard as he could.

But Nezumi's 'hyper fang' attack found no purchase. To the rattata's disappointment, his teeth sank into nothing. "Ha! See," he told himself, "It wasn't real! It was just one of Fang Face's tricks!"

Nezumi chuckled, cleaning himself up a bit to remove the smell of fear from his fur. But as he twisted his head back awkwardly he spotted something that nearly caused him to die of fright. Farther down the tunnel where he'd come from, the narrow shaft was filled floor to ceiling with meowths. Each one was clambering over its neighbors, trying to get a look at the rattata. And each had a hungry look in its brightly glowing yellow eyes as their claws slowly unsheaved.

"That's it!" exclaimed Nezumi, no longer fighting against instinct, "I'm out a here!"

Without a moment's hesitation, the rattata turned and ran for his life...

Umi slither along the tunnel nearly silently, listening to the quietly echoing sounds of the gastly somewhere up ahead of her, every so often stopping at an intersection and listening to see which way the sound carried.

As she found herself getting farther and farther away from the entrance, the dragon found a gloomy darkness setting in. At first, the faint light from her luminescent eyes illuminated the path before the dragon, but all too soon the agitated, swirling orange glow lit up less and less of the tunnel ahead.

The effect caused Umi to take pause, and her eyes shifted to a strange mixture of orange and purple as she glanced around, shivering as a suddenly cold breeze passed by her, bringing with it a strange black fog.

"Ghost illusions," Umi told herself in a contemptuous tone, trying to hide the spark of fear that surfaced for a moment, "he must be low on energy if that's the best he can do."

The dragon gritted her teeth, and slithered forward once again. Without daring to look back, she plunged deeper into the cold darkness, only to find the light from her now brilliantly orange eyes did next to nothing to dispel it. Also, as Umi moved farther along, the chill of the cool metal beneath her seemed to intensify until Umi was certain she saw a thin layer of frost lining the walls.

"It's a trick," the dratini told herself, shutting her eyes tight and using her sense of smell to pick up the vague scent of ectoplasm in the air while her ears strained to hear a quiet, muffled laughter to her left.

"This way," muttered Umi, her teeth chattering as the she found herself sticking to the nearly frozen metal beneath her, "All I need is one clear shot, and that ghost is going down."

But as she turned the corner, Umi found herself slithering across something cold and granular. Carefully opening one eye, the little dragon yelped as she spotted the huge snowdrift that blocked her passage.

"No," she said, shaking her head and trying to ignore the fact that the end of her tail had gone numb, "There can't be snow in here. It does NOT snow inside!"

Umi opened her eyes again, and stifled a scream. As she watched, sheets of ice began growing over the walls and ceiling, rapidly reaching far down the tunnel and leaving long, sharp icicles in its wake.

"Miranda," Umi whimpered, finally unable to ignore the sluggish feeling that dulled her reactions, or the fact that her skin was beginning to crack in places as frostbite set quickly in, "Help me..."

Umi sniffled as she heard the sounds of a sudden howling wind racing towards her, and as quickly as she could, wound her serpentine body up into as small a target as possible.

"I wish I was, was home," cried the little dragon, gritting her teeth against the inevitable chill that would soon sweep over her, "It's just so c-cold-"

But as the winds drew nearer, Umi heard a sound that brought her back to reality. A loud, panicked wailing and the clacking of small claws clambering for purchase across the slippery metal floors of the ventilation tunnels.

"Nezumi!" the dratini exclaimed, forcing her head up through the thick layer of snow and ice she suddenly found herself buried under.

The scream grew louder as she listened. The rattata was running in a blind panic only a few meters from her position. "Nezumi!" Umi called out, her voice full of sudden, blind hope as she leapt from the icy prison the gastly had sought to seal her in, sending shards of frozen water in all directions.

"Hold on!" Umi called, barely noticing as the gastly's illusions fade around her, and the warmth returned to her body, "I'm on my way!"

Umi closed her eyes again, wary of any more illusions, instead listening to her friend's panicked yelling as he drew near. "Nezumi!" she called again, making a sudden sharp turn as she heard the rattata's voice more clearly, only to feel a sharp pain in her side as she blindly hit the edge of the corner.

"Draco-babe!" the rattata called back, hope entering his panicked tone, "Where are ya!"

"I don't know!" the dragon called back, pausing for a moment before striking off in the opposite direction as the sound of Nezumi's voice shifted.

"Stay where ya, areeee!" warned Nezumi, his voice rising in pitch and trailing off strangely as he used quick-attack to hurtle himself down a near by corridor at blinding speed.

"Okay, oof-!" Umi was cut off as something small and furry collided with her, sending the dragon sliding quite a distance down the tunnel on her back.

"Draco-babe!" exclaimed Nezumi as Umi opened one eye suspiciously, "Great to see ya!"

Umi tried not to smile at the wide, bemused grin the rattata gave her, but as always Nezumi's good humor was infectious. "Get off me, mammal," she chided playfully, flipping over onto her stomach once more before rearing up and listening carefully.

"Dreck," muttered Nezumi, glancing down the corridor he'd come down and backing up against the dratini as his eyes went wide with fright, "They followed me!"

"No," said Umi sternly, quickly wrapping the end of her tail around Nezumi's to keep him from tearing off again, "It's just a trick. We have to stay together now. It'll be harder for him to scare us this way."

"Oh man," the rattata replied, suddenly glancing down another corridor as a second sound of scraping claws joined the first, "Now we're all gonna die!"

"No one's going to die," assured Umi bravely, trying not to think about the frozen prison she'd just recently escaped and finally shouting out, loud enough for the gastly to hear, "Come on you coward! Stop hiding behind illusions and show yourself!"

"Y-yeah!" added Nezumi, binding together the shreds of his courage as dark shadows began to creep around the corners farther down two of the only viable exits, "Sh-show yourself, Fang-Face, and let's get this over with!"

But their ownly reply was a long, echoing laugh that was immediately followed by a dark shape with brightly glowing red eyes hurtling down the corridor behind them.

"Over there!" warned Nezumi, nearly leaping out of his skin as he 'felt' the oncoming pokemon's presence.

"Done!" assured Umi, swiveling her head most of the way around and firing off an awkward blast of highly pressurized water.

"Foolish mortals!" cackled the gastly, easily evading the attack by spiraling towards them.

"I'll show you foolish!" promised Nezumi, regaining his courage with Umi at his side and firing up his focus energy technique.

"Hold-! Still-!" complained Umi, her serpentine body twisting awkwardly as she tried to get a clear shot at the oncoming ghost, but continually missing even the easiest of hits.

"Sorry! Looks like you loose!" laughed the gastly, his image suddenly winking out as the real him appeared a short distance behind before a dark purple aura of unlight enveloped him and shot out towards his two opponents.

"No!" exclaimed Nezumi, hurtling Umi's tail and standing on his hind legs to cover her as the nightshade attack spiraled towards them, "Not this day, Fang Face!"

"Nezumi!" the dragon exclaimed as the rattata leapt up and caught the blast of negatively charged chi in the torso, sending the small bodied rodent flipping end over end past her.

"Impressive," chuckled the gastly, licking his lips as he tasted the emotional energy of Nezumi's sudden bravery, "But I think I'll have you for desert, little girl!"

"Not on my watch!" squeaked Nezumi, coming out of nowhere and leaping into the air once more, his purplish fur still enveloped in the silvery glow of the focus energy technique.

"Wha-!" began the shocked gastly, barely having time to scream as the rattata tore into him, continuing right on through his ethereal body, and out the other side.

"That's it!" the ghost exclaimed in sudden fear, his eyes going wide as he saw a spark of flame brewing deep within the dragon's mouth, "I'm outta here!"

"Get 'im, Draco-Babe!" exclaimed Nezumi, lopping awkwardly forward, covered in ectoplasm as the gastly barrel rolled his way down the tunnel.

"Gotcha!" called Umi, turning to follow the fleeing spectre as the rattata grabbed hold of the end of her tail.

"Don't mind the slime, kid!" laughed Nezumi as they rounded a corner and he managed to pull himself up a bit farther.

"I'm taking a looooong hot bath after this is over anyway!" promised Umi, her voice sounding determined even with a slimy rattata clinging desperately to her back.

"Hey!" laughed Nezumi as a sudden white light nearly blinded him, "It's the exit! We've got him now!"

Not far ahead of them, the gastly fled for his unlife. Though he'd shifted back into invisibility, the ectoplasm covering the rattata's eyes, and the sheer anger emanating off the dratini making the common ploy nearly useless. But then, just ahead, he saw the end of the tunnel approaching. He didn't know which end he'd come to, but it hardly mattered. The human's would offer little or no resistance, even his severely weakened state. He'd find a nice safe place to hide for a few days, and then he'd be fine. Then it'd be back into the simply incredible computer he'd found. Back to delving into its secrets, and back to trying to transfer to Saffron's main grid where he'd have sooo much fun scaring the life out of everyone-!

A sudden, sharp blow from above interrupted the gastly's train of thought. Just as he entered the larger room, something hit him. Hard. The gastly's last thoughts where a mixture of sudden fear and amazement; but also a begrudging respect for the human's resourcefulness. He'd had no idea that a wooden sword covered in ectoplasm could even harm him. But as he began to discorporate, something spherical passed harmlessly through him, and a strange white light enveloped the gastly a second before he went unconscious...

"Got him!" exclaimed Miranda, snatching up the ghost-ball just as her two wounded pokemon half-fell, half-leapt out of the ventilation shaft.

"Amazing!" commented Joanne, shaking her head in disbelief as Umi landed reasonably safely and glared up at the gray/back pokeball in her trainer's hand.

'Eh, not bad,' commented Nezumi in poke-speak, wiping a bit ectoplasm off his mouth before spitting out a tooth, 'For a human...!'

Bob shook his head as Miranda finished her story and her seventh cup of tea before leaning back against the archaic looking couch and staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. "But he's been loyal to me every day since," she explained, idly petting the haunter as the ghost smiled contentedly, his disembodied hands reaching far back and idly playing with her ponytail in a similar manner, "And I've no real reason to complain about him. Wraith was, is and always will be a welcome addition to my group."

"I can see that now," mused her stepfather, glancing back at the computer and noticing that the complete systems check was finished, "Oh, here we go. Hold on."

The man's fingers raced across the keyboard for a moment, striking hotkeys that gave him what he wanted far faster than a mouse click ever could before calling up the courier's files once again.

"Oh my," he laughed, glancing at Miranda with a defeated smile, "I'm afraid it's true, Miri."

"I'm really that rich?" she asked guiltily, the courier's smile mildly forced as she tried to reconcile her feelings of guilt and elation.

"Yup," responded Bob with a smile and a nod, motioning dramatically towards the screen, "You're more than 20,000 credits ahead. Spend it wisely, Courier Lilcamp."

"Unbelievable," muttered Miranda, shaking her head in disbelief before a small smile crossed her lips. "You know," she said thoughtfully, glancing at Wraith mysteriously, "I do know three rather well placed people in Sylph Co who owe me favors."

"Oh?" inquired her stepfather, finding Miranda's smile infectious.

The courier nodded. "I was thinking of maybe seeing if I couldn't arrange a little gift for you and mom," she said with a nonchalant shrug, "Something that would make even Wraith think twice about inhabiting your system."

"You, you wouldn't-" stammered Bob, his eyes going wide with astonishment.

Miranda nodded, a wide grin crossing her face. "I can't possibly spend that much money all on myself," she said helplessly, "And besides, if you think your system's fast and efficient now, wait until you see what a porygon can do for you!"

Bob shook his head in amazement, uncertain about what to say. "Miri," he replied at last, "I think I understand what that friend of yours sees in you."

Miranda shrugged. "It's nothing," she assured as her mother's voice could be heard from the other room, "I'll see to it before we take off again."

"Miri!" her mother called, "Your friend's back from Aunt Laurna's!" 

The courier smiled. "I'd better get out there and see how it went," she replied, hopping to her feet and grabbing Wraith by the hand.

"I'll bet she kicked butt," her stepfather assured with a warm smile, "Your friend's one tough cookie."

"Yeah well, just keep your hands out of the cookie jar," his stepdaughter teased, ruffling his graying hair as she walked by, pausing before exiting the room, "Oh, and thanks, Bob."

"What for?"

Miranda shrugged. "Just for being you," she replied with a slight smile, shaking her head as the right words escaped her, "For being like a father to me whether I like it or not."

"I'll take that as a compliment," he told her, turning back to the computer to hide the blush that Bob knew had crept up his face, the warm feeling that overcame him making the man wish he hadn't turned the heat on in the room.

"You'd better," the courier chuckled, and walked from the room, trailing a sleepy ghost behind her...

THE END

Copyright Nikolai Mirovich 4, 2001 Home Page "ftp/ftp. 


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